Kerala: KV Thomas will attend CPM event only if he plans to leave Congress, says state party leadership

On Tuesday, the CPI(M) included Thomas’s name in the list of participants in the seminar on “central and state relations”, which is slated for Saturday, despite the Congress high command denying him and party MP Shashi Tharoor permission to accept the CPI(M) invite for the seminar.

While Tharoor had immediately announced his decision to go by the party directive, Thomas, who has appeared to be sulking after being denied a party ticket in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, is yet to make any such announcement.

On Wednesday, he told reporters in Kochi, “I would announce the decision on Thursday. The present political situation in the country demands the emergence of a non-BJP political alliance at the national level.”

Reacting to this, Congress state president K Sudhakaran said, “Thomas would attend the seminar only if has any plan to leave the Congress. I hope he would not attend the CPI(M) event. Maintaining suspense over the decision may be his tactics.”

The state leadership of the Congress has been opposed to any possibility of party leaders attending a CPI(M) event at a time when the party is spearheading the agitation against the Left government in Kerala over the semi-high speed rail corridor. It was based on this that the party high command denied permission to Tharoor and Thomas to attend the CPI(M) seminar when the two leaders approached it.