Youth Congress violence mars Rahul Gandhi’s Kerala visit

KOCHI: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said decentralisation was needed not just for development but also in party politics, after attending a workshop at the Kerala Institute for Local Administration near Thrissur, on a day when violence marred Youth Congress elections in the district.

Sitting through an interactive session on ‘Democratic Decentralisation of Power and Participatory Planning’, Gandhi asked panchayat members if political parties consulted them before choosing candidates for elections. Interestingly, both Congress and CPM members answered in the negative.

Gandhi said it is unfortunate that no party is taking into account the views of elected members of the panchayats when deciding on their candidates.

Further, he said MPs and MLAs should spend their Local Area Development fund for regional development in consultation with the panchayat members. Currently, it was not being done in accordance with the spirit of decentralisation of power, he added. Gandhi agreed with the members that some central schemes were not suited for all states.

Later, Congress vice-president visited Adat, a panchayat which had earlier won the best panchayat award. Rahul Gandhi said a delegation from Uttar Pradesh will visit Kerala to study how the state has implemented decentralisation of power.

“Before the elections you have CPM candidate and Congress candidate... But you have no voice to decide who becomes CPM candidate, who becomes Congress candidate..,” he told a village assembly of a ward at the Adat Panchyat.

“The most important thing for a political party is to bring in everybody’s voice. In certain states like UP one person decides all the candidates before polls.. Political parties should tell the people who are their candidates,” he said.

Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi’s visit coincided with the escalation of violence in the district after Premlal, a Youth Congress worker, was attacked by armed men. Group fighting within the Youth Congress has been cited as the reason behind the attack. Minor instances of violence were also reported from other parts of the state.