Thiruvananthapuram: Picking P S Sreedharan Pillai to lead the Kerala unit of the BJP is a clear giveaway that infighting has messed up the party.
Pillai is said to be the consensus candidate but this is nothing but a nice way of stating the obvious: Pillai is the party president by default. Any other choice would have seen an explosive outbreak of hostilities within the state unit.
The national BJP leadership was keen to see K Surendran replace Kummanam Rajasekharan. The BJP national organising secretary in charge of Kerala, B L Santhosh, had recommended Surendran. But for the RSS leadership in the state, he was unacceptable. Surendran, it was felt, was too close to V Muraleedharan. To avoid charges of favouritism, no serious attempt was made to assess the suitability of anyone from the P K Krishnadas faction either. (The RSS has not forgiven Muraleedharan for what he had done to Kummanam Rajasekharan, considered the most admired BJP leader in the state. In retaliation, the RSS had asked the BJP central leadership to sack him from the state. By putting the Rajya Sabha MP in charge of the party's affairs in Andhra Pradesh, the national leadership has virtually denied Muraleedharan time to meddle in Kerala affairs.)
The fallen Sanghi
Sreedharan Pillai was the only leader of repute remaining. He has kept a fair distance from the warring groups inside the party but still has emerged as one of the state's tallest BJP leaders. The RSS but was never really happy with his secular credentials. He had been accused of being too soft, most severely in 2003 for dissuading Hindu Araya fishermen from carrying out a retaliatory attack against Muslims in Marad.
Pillai was also seen as lacking in ideological rigour. During the Chengannur byelections this year he did not think twice about seeking the support of the Sunni Muslim leader Kanthapuram A P Aboobacker Musalir or the Metropolitan of the Diocese of Chengannur, Thomas Mar Athanasios, or Kerala Congress leader K M Mani who was under the shadow of a corruption scandal. This instinct for inclusiveness in Pillai was always frowned upon in the Sangh Parivar.
Even then, at this juncture when most state BJP leaders are engrossed in fratricide or caught in corruption scandals, the RSS had no choice but to back Pillai. So it was with the RSS imprimatur that the BJP organising secretary Ramlal took Pillai's name to Amit Shah.
Now that Pillai is here to stay, the party has decided to make a virtue of necessity. Sreedharan Pillai has been given the mandate to stitch up a stable enough coalition before the Lok Sabha polls. It is an enormous challenge given that Kummanam Rajasekharan was unable to keep even the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) close.
Poor man's A B Vajpayee
But if anyone has the political acuity to cobble up a working coalition, it is Sreedharan Pillai. It was during his first tenure as state president (2003-2006) that history was made: a candidate backed by the BJP (P C Thomas of the Indian Federal Democratic Party) won a Lok Sabha seat in the state. It was a time when it was considered scandalous for a political party, leave alone a predominantly Christian party, to be seen with the BJP. P C Thomas had then stated that it was Vajpayee's and Pillai's secular appeal that drew him to the NDA fold.
It was also during Pillai's first term that the BJP won over 550 local body seats in the state for the first time. It was also during his watch that the capital district first turned towards the BJP in a big way; during the 2004 Lok Sabha polls O Rajagopal secured 2.29 lakh votes and lost the second place by a mere 2000 votes.
Sreedharan Pillai has already sounded the bugle. Right after he was officially announced as the state president, Pillai said that he personally wanted K M Mani in the NDA fold.
The distraught elements in the LDF, too, are a target. The much hyped union of the Kerala Congress factions of R Balakrishna Pillai and Skaria Thomas has not come through. Both the parties are up for grabs.
Pillai is also said to have a good chemistry with the sulking SNDP Yogam supremo Vellapally Natesan. He was always in favour of keeping the BDJS, the political wing of the SNDP, in good humour. The silent revolt of the BDJS had cost him dear in the Chengannur byelections.
Pillai also shares a warm bond with NSS general secretary Sukumaran Nair. Nair can be so imperious at times that he has on certain occasions snubbed BJP leaders like V Muraleedharan and Kummanam Rajasekharan. Suresh Gopi, too, had felt Nair's wrath when he asked the actor-turned-politician to leave the NSS headquarters. But Sreedharan Pillai, especially because of his high standing as a lawyer, commands Nair's respect.
