Karunakaran’s lieutenants knock at Sonia’s door

NEW DELHI: As sharad Pawar and K Karunakaran finalise the proposed DIC(K) merger with the NCP, a group of senior leaders and lieutenants of Mr Karunakaran’s party have reached Delhi to finalise their return to the Congress fold, saying they don’t approve of their leader’s merger plans.

After a meeting with the Congress president’s political secretary, Ahmed Patel, on Monday evening, these leaders are scheduled to meet Ms Gandhi on Tuesday to formally place their request for ‘home coming’. The Congress high command is expected to readmit them into the party at a soon-to-be-held function in Kerala.

Those raising the banner of revolt against Mr Karunakaran’s merger move are the very leaders who had stood by him during his past fights with the Congress high command, leading to the formation of the break-away DIC(K). Among the leaders who met Mr Patel were former state minister P Shankaran, a staunch loyalist of Mr Karunakaran, and V Balaram, who had gone to the extent of vacating his assembly seat to enable Mr Karukaran’s son K Muralidharan unsuccessfully contest a by-election after he became the power minister in the erstwhile AK Antony government.

Others DIC(K) leaders who are in Delhi seeking Ms Gandhi’s blessings for returning to the Congress fold are former party MLAs AN Appachan, MA Chandrashekharan and D Sugatan, who had quit their Assembly seats to join the DIC(K) when Mr Karunakaran walked out of the Congress party.

With the Kerala Congress leadership keen to ensure the return of these DIC(K) leaders to the parent body in order to project a split in Mr Karunakaran’s party before he finalises the merger with NCP, CWC member A K Antony and PCC chief Ramesh Chennithala are in Delhi facilitating these rebels’ engagements with the high command. The PCC has already said it would welcome back anybody from the DIC(K) ‘except the father and son’.

Rejecting their leader’s merger plan with the NCP, the ‘rebel’ spokesman Mr Shankaran said they were all true Congressmen and can’t be party to anything that goes against their principles.

Referring to their joining the DIC(K) when Mr Karunakaran revolted against the Congress, he replied that then they were with a party which had projected Indira Gandhi as their leader, but now they could not stomach the prospects of working under the leadership of Mr Sharad Pawar and the NCP flag. The rebels also claimed to have the support a major section of the DIC(K) workers.