Cong. begins screening candidates for Kerala Assembly

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 31. The Congress today began preliminary preparations for the forthcoming Assembly elections with a meeting of its central monitoring committee for Kerala. This is to be followed by a meeting of the screening committee on Monday to short-list candidates. Kerala is the first State to be taken up by the party.

Today's low-key activities belied the build-up created by the arrival of top party leaders from Kerala last night. The entire top brass of the State leadership - comprising Mr. A.K. Antony, Mr. K. Karunakaran, the KPCC chief, Mr. T. Balakrishna Pillai, Mr. Oomen Chandy, Mr. Ramesh Chennithala, Mr. Vayalar Ravi and Mr. P.J. Kurien - is in the Capital. They are here to finalise candidates for the 88 seats the Congress is planning to contest in the 140-member Assembly.

Mr. Karunakaran, Mr. Antony and Mr. Pillai separately called on the Congress president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, and briefed her on the situation in the State. According to sources, there is unanimity in the Pradesh screening committee on the names for 21 seats. For the remaining 67, the committee has prepared a panel of names to be placed before the central screening committee consisting of the AICC general secretary in charge of the State, Mr. Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mr. P.M. Sayeed, Mr. Shiv Shankar, Mr. Antony, Mr. Karunakaran and Mr. Pillai. The names will then be sent to the central election committee headed by Ms. Gandhi.

The exercise of finalising candidates for the undecided 67 seats is bound to witness some hard bargaining between the Antony and Karunakaran groups. However, talking to The Hindu, Mr. Antony was optimistic of completing the process without too much difficulty. ``Ticket distribution is always a difficult process, but we will be able to complete the exercise in a few days.''

The main reason for his optimism - a view shared by even the central leaders dealing with the State - is that the entire party realises that it cannot afford to lose this election to the CPI(M). ``The main aim is to defeat this Government. Everything else is secondary,'' said Mr. Antony. If the left parties continued to remain in power for another term ``the State would be beyond redemption. We will soon become another West Bengal.''

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