THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: After three days of the state council and other meetings in Kottayam, BJP leaders here feel they have emerged the real Opposition in Kerala. A buoyed party leadership will soon announce the formation of a core committee of former presidents and general secretaries targeting the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party will complete the ground work at mandalam, district and booth levels by mid-March. (It has over 18,000 booth committees). Daylong meetings in all mandalams will take place on the assigned date.
Former state president P. K. Krishnadas told DC that the politics is seeing a change in the state with BJP becoming an alternative to the two domineering fronts. “After three days deliberations, adopting a political resolution and deciding to hold a series of agitations, BJP is now a force. We are the real opposition, not the UDF,” he claimed. DC had reported earlier that BJP national president Amit Shah had asked the state leadership that former presidents need not contest the Lok Sabha elections.
A majority of the core committee members, except president Kummanam Rajasekharan and former presidents O. Rajagopal, P. S. Sreedharan Pillai and C. K. Padmanabhan, have been entrusted with a parliament seat as in-charge to prepare for the big fight. Accordingly, V. Mural-eedharan (Attingal or Kasaragod), P. K. Krishnadas (Kasaragod or Pathanamthitta), M. T. Ramesh (Thiruvanan-thapuram), K. Surend-ran (Thrissur), Sobha Surendran (Kozhikode) and A. N. Radhakri-shnan (Palakkad) will be taking care of the constituencies assigned to them. “A final decision on who all should contest the LS elections will come later,” said another former state president.
