Congress veteran Aiyar comes down on party’s State, national leadership

Congress veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar waded into his party’s debatably touchy and constantly evolving factional equations in Kerala on Monday. His latest foray against the Congress leadership came close on the heels of his predicting a third term for Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in 2026. 

Mr. Aiyar told reporters that he would retract the contentious forecast if the Congress leadership showed the gumption to endorse Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan as the UDF’s Chief Minister candidate instead of AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal, whom “Rahul Gandhi admires”. 

Mr. Aiyar’s endorsement of Mr. Satheesan as UDF’s prospective Chief Minister appeared calibrated to forestall Congress’s efforts to present a united face. He termed Mr. Satheesan the only “secular socialist” in the Congress in Kerala. “He (Mr. Satheesan) is on the right wing of the Congress and the left wing of the Communist party”. 

Disconcertingly for the Congress, Mr. Aiyar’s endorsement of Mr. Vijayan and most of his acerbic comments against the Congress’s State and national leadership came at a press conference he held alongside Minister for Local Self-Governments M.B. Rajesh and CPI(M) leader T.M. Thomas Isaac. Mr. Aiyar portrayed himself as a “gadfly” in the Congress. He requested reporters “not to lower him to the level of a Congressman interested solely in internecine feuding” when they pointed out that senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala had termed him a party outsider. 

Mr. Aiyar also painted a grim picture of UDF’s electoral prospects. He said the Left Democratic Front (LDF) had “broken the cycle” of revolving door politics by assuming power for a second consecutive term in Kerala, a first in the State’s history. “The Congress lacked the capability to defeat the LDF in 2021. They do not have the capacity at the moment. The LDF is a house in order. Its internal differences are not played out in public as in the Congress,” he said. 

“As a Congress person, I want the United Democratic Front (UDF) to win (in 2026). As a Gandhian, I am constrained to speak the truth,” he said. Mr. Aiyar said Congress’s national spokesperson Pawan Khera’s contention that he (Mr. Aiyar) was no longer a part of the party would not erase his political legacy. “As a four-year-old, I was taken to Birla House along with my younger brother to see Mahatma Gandhi. He called me the sun of his eye and my brother, the moon,” he said. 

Mr. Satheesan, Mr. Venugopal, and KPCC president Sunny Joseph stated that Mr. Aiyar’s opinion had no bearing on the UDF’s prospects in the polls, since he was no longer a Congress worker.