Oomen Chandy's crusade gives Congress a boost in Kerala

The Antony faction of the Congress in Kerala has emerged a stronger force after one of its leaders Oomen Chandy's one-man crusade against the state government -- led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist -- ended successfully last Thursday.

Chandy, demanding the suspension of load shedding during the state secondary school leaving certificate examinations, and a judicial inquiry into police attacks on Congress offices in Kottayam (his hometown) and Thiruvananthapuram (the state capital), had gone on a fast from March 1.

With this triumph, Chandy, by giving his party a much-needed image boost, has thwarted former Union minister Kunnoth Karunakaran's attempts to regain control of the organisation. This is the second time Chandy has put a spanner in the veteran leader's works -- in March 1995, he was instrumental in ousting Karunakaran from the state chief minister-ship.

It had started as a routine agitation by a student's wing of the Congress -- the Kerala Students Union -- demanding suspension of the half-hourly evening load shedding during the SSLC examinations. The agitation turned violent when student leaders tried to barge into the state secretariat, and the police resorted to a lathicharge.

Protest demonstrations followed all over the state and, in Kottayam and Thiruvananthapuram, the police allegedly entered the Congress district committee offices. Chandy immediately went on a fast and continued with it even after he was arrested and shifted to hospital.

Interestingly, there was complete solidarity in the Opposition about the issue, with even the Indian Union Muslim League, which had remained divided over joint actions against the government, pitching in. Karunakaran, too, signalled his party members to join the bandwagon. But his followers could not make their presence felt anywhere.

Meanwhile, partners of the state government, particularly the Communist Party of India and the Revolutionary Socialist Party, are highly critical about the way the situation was handled. ''All these could have been avoided if the government had lifted the load shedding earlier. The United Democratic Front had done it last year, despite a much serious power crisis," sources in the ruling Left Democratic Front point out.