The Hindu : Padmaja, Balram in Congress list

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 01, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Padmaja, Balram in Congress list

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 31. The Karunakaran-Antony line vis-à-vis candidate selection for the Lok Sabha election from Kerala has prevailed upon the Congress central leadership, which today cleared the shortlist submitted to the party's Central Election Committee a fortnight ago. With today's announcement, the Congress has finalised its candidates for all the 17 seats the party is contesting in the State.

Though the high command apparently had reservations about the candidature of Padmaja Venugopal from Mukundapuram and V. Balram from Kozhikode, the Chief Minister, A.K. Antony, and the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) acting president, P.P. Thankachan, who is considered a loyalist of the senior Congress leader, K. Karunakaran, apparently had their way at a meeting here late last night.

Both of them figure in today's list. The others whose names have been cleared are: N.A. Ahmed from Kasaragod, Mullappally Ramachandran from Kannur, M.T. Padma from Vadakara, V.S. Vijayaraghavan from Palakkad, K.A. Thulasi from Ottapalam, Edward Edezhath from Ernakulam, Anto Antony from Kottayam, Benny Behnan from Idukki, Sooranad Rajasekharan from Kollam and M.I. Shahnawaz from Chirayinkeezhu.

In the first list released on March 21, the party had decided to field its sitting members in the 13th Lok Sabha who were keen on contesting the elections: V.S. Sivakumar from Thiruvananthapuram, Kodikunnil Suresh from Adoor, Ramesh Chennithala from Mavelikara, V.M. Sudheeran from Alappuzha and A.C. Jose from Thrissur.

While reservations were raised about the candidature of Ms. Venugopal, daughter of Mr. Karunakaran, and Mr. Balram (who is being given the party ticket for having vacated his Assembly segment in favour of the octogenarian leader's son, K. Muraleedharan, who was inducted into the State Cabinet recently) as it was seen as an ``all-in-the-family'' arrangement, the final hurdle the two had to cross pertained to their winning chances since an independent survey has projected them to be weak candidates.

However, with the two strongmen of State politics holding their ground, the high command decided to go by their advice regarding these two constituencies. Earlier, a section of the party in the State, led by two general secretaries, had objected to the inclusion of Mr. Edezhath and Mr. Ahmed in the shortlist on the premise that they were rank outsiders without any mass appeal. Besides, they had alleged that Mr. Rajasekharan had bribed members of the Karunakaran faction to get a party nomination.

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