Cong upbeat with turning tide’, hopes it’ll end infighting

For sometime now, the high command here has been worried about how rival factions led by K Karunakaran and A K Antony in Kerala and Ahmed Patel and Madhavsinh Solanki in Gujarat have been at each others necks in the run up to the party polls. In fact, the seniority of the senior leaders involved — all Congress Working Committee (CWC) members — has made it all the more difficult for party chief Sonia Gandhi to rein them in. But with the poll outcome showing a distinct upswing in Congress’ fortunes, the high command is hoping that the rival factions will now bury the hatchet and work together for reviving the party in these states.

Of the two states, Kerala, where the Congress is in alliance with like-minded parties under the United Democratic Front (UDF), goes to assembly polls next year and it is crucial for the party to maintain a facade of unity if it has to tackle the ruling Left-led United Democratic Front (UDF).

The results have barely come in and rival factions in both states have begun claiming that the victory belongs to their camp. There is a rush, say party sources, for outdoing each other in the race for claiming the victorious candidates as their nominees and those defeated as that of the rivals. And if this is any indication, the infighting appears far from over.

Party sources point out that the local bodies’ elections could have, at the most, brought about a temporary truce among the factions and that the infighting is likely to simmer now that the polls are over. “The fight is for occupying positions of prominence in the state unit in the coming organisational polls…it’s about who will control the party apparatus, whether supporters of Ahmed Patel or Madhavsinh Solanki in Gujarat or those of Karunakaran or Antony in Kerala.”

While Sonia loyalists are decidedly upbeat over the party’s good performance in these two states — calling it as one of the manifestations of the tide turning under her leadership — the fact, however, remains that the victories belong more to the efforts of the party cadre at the grass-roots level than to any serious slogging by central leaders.

In Kerala, the party was able to weather the infighting thanks to its resilient state unit which has been traditionally strong at the lower levels due to a long history of local body elections. And in Gujarat, the party cashed in on the anti-incumbency factor and a wave against the BJP rule.

The fact that none of the central leaders, barring Ahmed Patel and Ajit Jogi (who toured Gujarat) campaigned in the civic polls lends credence to the fact that it was mostly a grass-roots effort by the party.