Thiruvananthapuram: Pressure on PCC prez to fight polls

Thiruvananthapuram: Pressure mounted even at the level of the high command on state congress president Mullappally Ramachandran to contest from Vadakara where CPM strongman P. Jayarajan is the LDF candidate. Mr Ramachandran, ending his second term in Vadakara, had opted out of a contest owing to his larger responsibility as the state party chief.

However, party leaders and UDF candidates in Malabar urged him to toss the hat in the ring given its electoral importance. With party spokesman Rajmohan Unnithan in Kasargod and KPCC vice-president K. Sudhakaran in Kannur, the presence of the party boss in Vadakara would complete the lineup for the UDF’s high-voltage battle, focusing on the spate of assassinations, involving CPM cadre, in Malabar.

Already, RMPI leader K K Rema, the wife of slain leader T P Chandrasekharan, had opted out of the fray, backing the UDF to ensure the defeat of Mr Jayarajan, charge-sheeted for murder. Desperate, she even rang up Mr K Muraleedharan MLA, to be the candidate.

Mr Jayarajan, who survived an RSS attack decades ago, prefers to term the contest as “one against the combined onslaught of the UDF and the RSS against the Left and secular forces”.

Sources expect Mr Ramachandran’s candidature to be clinched by midnight after party president Rahul Gandhi returned from Karnataka. AICC general secretary in charge of Kerala, Mr Mukul Wasnik, who failed to persuade Mr Ramachandran to contest, asked him to stay back in Delhi. Among leaders who openly urged Mr Ramachandran to contest was former PCC president V M Sudheeran.