The Congress was set to name its legislative party leader on Thursday at a meeting of newly elected MLAs at the KPCC headquarters, with the choice expected to decide the state’s next chief minister. The Congress Legislature Party meeting was scheduled for 1 pm on May 14.
KPCC chief Sunny Joseph announced the meeting a day earlier, after Jairam Ramesh said the next chief minister would be finalised following a meeting between Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge in New Delhi. Gandhi and Kharge met at the Congress chief’s residence, where the final round of discussions on the Kerala choice lasted about 40 minutes.
The timing matters because the Congress-led UDF won the Kerala Assembly elections with a two-thirds majority, and the party has still not settled the top post 10 days after the results were declared on May 4. Internal lobbying and protests from grassroots workers slowed the process, even as prominent contenders such as K C Venugopal, V D Satheesan and Ramesh Chennithala remained in the running. Gandhi had also spoken with several leaders from Kerala and around eight former state unit chiefs before the final talks with Kharge.
The delay has already begun to spill beyond party politics. On Thursday, V Sivankutty said the absence of a cabinet after 10 days had created a crisis in the general education department, affecting decision-making while lakhs of students and parents waited for the SSLC results. He said work to ensure schools were fit for the new academic year was also in disorder.
That leaves the Congress with a simple test after weeks of manoeuvring: turn an election victory into a functioning government. If the party does not close the gap between its parliamentary strength and its internal rivalries quickly, the administrative vacuum will keep widening just as the new school year approaches.
