Sonia’s norms worry Kerala LS aspirants

In Kerala, there are three party candidates who have lost the last two Lok Sabha elections held in 1996 and 1998 respectively. They are K Muraleedharan, V S Vijayaraghavan and K K Vijayalakshmi. While Muraleedharan lost the Kozhikode and Thrissur seats respectively in 1996 and 1998, Vijayaraghavan and Vijayalakshmi were defeated in Palakkad and Ottappalam respectively inthose elections.

What keeps them still hopeful is that Congress party president Sonia Gandhi has not as yet spelt out the cutoff margin of votes that would make a twice-defeated candidate ineligible to contest again. According to reports, the margin is likely to be fixed at 50,000 votes. If that is so, the three party members in Kerala may not technically become ineligible as all of them had lost the two Lok Sabha elections by less than 50,000 votes.

K Muraleedharan lost the 1996 and 1998 elections by a margin of 38,703 and 18,409 votes respectively, Vijayaraghavan by 23,423 and 25,022 votes and Vijayalakshmi by 23,059 and 19,800 votes.

However, they may be compelled to forfeit their claim for party ticket on moral grounds. Given the group and the personal rivalries in the Pradesh Congress Committee, there is likely to be pressure from within the party to deny ticket to them in the spirit of the party president’s directive.Besides, it is not known whether the Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s newnorms would hold good only for the forthcoming election or disqualify twice-defeated candidates from contesting to the Lok Sabha indefinitely. If the latter is the case, it would put a question mark on the political fortunes of K Muraleedharan who is being groomed to take over the mantle of leadership from his politician-father.

Of course, it won’t debar Muraleedharan from playing a leadership role in Kerala, but would checkmate his emergence as a national leader. Karunakaran, who himself had once come close to realising his ultimate ambition of donning the prime ministerial gaddi, would not wish to confine his equally ambitious son to State politics.

Anyhow, it should be a matter of consolation for Karunakaran that Sonia Gandhi’s second criterion that relatives of party leaders, except those who are already in politics, should not be given tickets would not apply to Muraleedharan . This would be because he has already established his credentials as a politician, having come to occupy the number twoslot in the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee hierarchy now.

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