Rahul Gandhi takes views of Kerala Congress leaders on choice of Chief Minister

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday held one-on-one meetings with some former PCC presidents and select party functionaries of Kerala regarding choosing the party's chief minister. Besides hearing their individual choices for the post, Congress sources said Gandhi also asked them about the nature of the recent street lobbying in Kerala for certain leaders, whether they were choreographed by certain forces as a show of "people's sentiments" or whether they were genuine. The high command had cracked its whip on such street lobbying.

During the meeting at 10 Janpath, former PCC chiefs VM Sudheeran, K Muraleedharan, K Sudhakaran, working presidents AP Anilkumar, PC Vishnunath and Shafi Parambil and senior leader Thiruvanjur Radhakrishnan gave their preferences to Gandhi (while the latter spoke on phone to two other ex-PCC chiefs AK Antony and Mullapally Ramachandran) on the three main contenders for the CM post - KC Venugopal, VD Satheesan and Ramesh Chennithala - and also on their views on whether they consider the Congress leadership should make its choice independently on the basis of party MLAs' and senior party leaders' preferences or should it give weightage to the views of UDF allies, especially Indian Union Muslim League, which has been rooting for Satheesan. The participants were tight-lipped before the media, but they reportedly gave mixed responses.

Sensing that Congress leadership was about to make public its CM choice, the IUML leadership advertised that it is convening a meeting of its senior leaders on Wednesday in Kerala to discuss its response amid indications of the party expecting AICC to reach out to its leaders. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge returned to Delhi from Bengaluru by Tuesday evening to join the discussions here.