The storm that K. Karunakaran and his son Muralidharan threatened to whip up in Kerala’s fractious Congress or even split it, is now unlikely to even rustle the state leadership. Faced with political wilderness if their group proceeds with its renegade rallies, the father-son duo have backtracked.Publicly, Karunakaran’s decision to rally his flock was pivoted on a single demand: holding of organisational polls. This evening, the AICC’s state election officer for Kerala, M. Krishna Swamy, called on Karunakaran, offering to accommodate any of his wishes in the conduct of party polls. Karunakaran demanded that all district returning officers be from other states. Swamy agreed, leaving little ground for protest.The move came after three days of hectic activity in both camps. The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee had checkmated Karunakaran, issuing a whip to Congress MLAs to be present in the Assembly during discussions on demands for grants on March 9 — the day the first of his three rallies were to be held in Kozhikode. Karunakaran’s ‘I’ group has 15 MLAs in the 60-member Congress Legislature party, and violating the whip would have meant disqualification for six years for all of them. This morning, KPCC president Thennala Balakrishnan publicly hinted at action if they went ahead with the rallies. Till last evening, Muralidharan said his group would not be cowed down by the party whip. By this noon, he said his MLAs would stay off the Kozhikode rallies; they would, however, participate in subsequent ones. By evening, Karunakaran told a press conference that he was satisfied that the organisational elections will be conducted the way he had wanted. He, however, declined to discuss the issue of calling off the rallies in the presence of the AICC’s election officer.
