A day after the Congress suffered reverses in local body elections in Kerala, one of the states which the party has a realistic chance of winning in the next round of Assembly elections in April-May, a worried central leadership said the defeat was a “warning signal”, and asked the state unit to analyse the reasons in depth. It also signalled that the setback notwithstanding, a change in leadership was not feasible now, with the Assembly elections around the corner. An initial assessment of the election performance by the Congress central leadership has concluded that the party “ignored” local issues to focus narrowly on corruption allegations against the government. Also, the switch of the Kerala Congress (Mani) from the UDF to the LDF proved costly. The central leadership also believes that the party failed to effectively counter the LDF’s attacks on the tie-up with Welfare Party of India, the political arm of the Jamaat-e-Islami. Several leaders in Kerala have hit out at the party's state leadership. “Our base is intact but we did not realise that the BJP and the LDF were fast expanding their base. We did not see or understand that reality. We were living in a dream world, we were busy thinking about who will be the Chief Minister and ministers after the Assembly elections,” Kasargod MP Rajmohan Unnithan told The Indian Express. AICC general secretary in charge of Kerala Tariq Anwar said: “Panchayat elections are mainly about local issues. We kept highlighting issues such as the gold smuggling case [to which the office of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has been linked] and the drug case [in which the son of state CPM secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has been jailed] and ignored local issues. One of the reasons was that; there are many other reasons. I have told the PCC president to discuss with senior leaders, district presidents, where we were lacking.” The defeat would not impact the Assembly elections, Anwar insisted. “We had won 19 out of 20 Lok Sabha seats a year earlier. Had there been a connection between two elections, we would have won the local body elections too. So I doubt there will be any impact of the panchayat elections on the Assembly elections,” he said. “But in a way it (the election reverse) is a cause for alarm for us,”Anwar conceded. “We will try to bridge all gaps.” The results were a “warning signal” for the party, he said. “We have sufficient time. 4-5 months. We can improve our position in those areas.” On the demands for a change of state leadership, Anwar said: “I don’t think this is the time for a change of leadership. We are very close to the Assembly election.” On the reasons for the defeat, he said, “Kerala Congress (M) defected to the Left Front; that also affected us.” Asked about the controversy over the Congress’s alliance with the Welfare Party of India, he said: “We did not officially have an alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami. Our stand was very clear from the beginning that we are not going to associate with them. But the Left Front built up this impression that we have some understanding, and were in alliance with them. We could not properly counter that.” In Kerala, Lok Sabha MPs K Muraleedharan and K Sudhakaran also attacked the state leadership. Both Sudhakaran and the Kasargod MP Unnithan said there was need to re-establish democracy in the party. “The KPCC has become a group of sycophants. They keep away those who criticise the leadership. Only those who praise the leadership are promoted,” Unnithan said. V T Balram, one of the younger MLAs, said the Congress and the UDF were not able to project an alternative model of politics and governance. “People are keen to vote for the Congress. But we cannot win by riding on a negative vote.by harping against the LDF. We need to project an alternative model; that is why people are even opting for the BJP as a third option.” According to Balram, “The CPM is responsible for the BJP’s growth. But the UDF is not able to capitalise on that. The Congress and the UDF should project an alternative model before the Assembly elections – that if we are voted to power, we will do these things.,” he said.
