Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala has resigned from posts of three organisations related to the party.
The posts relinquished by the legislator are presidentship of the JaiHind TV, chairmanship of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute and presidentship of the K Karunakaran Foundation.
Chennithala sent his resignation letter to the party on September 24. However, the party has not yet accepted it, according to reports.
He had been holding these three posts for the past 15 years since he took over as the president of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). He managed to hold on to these posts even when V M Sudheeran and Mullappally Ramachandran succeeded him as the PCC chief.
The resignations come amid the ongoing crisis within the organisation over the restructuring of the Kerala unit of the Congress.
The veteran leader has been miffed over the recent developments in the party which started with V D Satheesan replacing him as the leader of the opposition following the party's defeat in the assembly polls earlier his year. Chennithala, who heads the 'I' faction of the party, has been sidelined in the party since then.
With the appointment of K Sudhakaran as the KPCC president, the traditional power axis, headed by Chennithala and Oommen Chandy, who leads the 'A' group, is no longer relevant in the party machinery.
'Let Sudhakaran succeed me'
Now Chennithala wants Sudhakaran to take over the posts he just quit. The institutions he has quit, including the party's mouthpiece channel, together has incurred a loss of Rs 35 crore, as per reports. Chennithala's resignation letter will be processed only after auditing these institutions, reports said.
The Congress in Kerala has been witnessing a series of resignations of late following the appointment of the new leadership. Recently, Sudheeran quit the party's Political Affairs Committee and AICC membership. He is yet to recall the decision even after the party leaders urging him to do so.
Before that KPCC general secretaries K P Anilkumar, G Rethikumar and secretary P S Prashanth quit the party and joined the CPM.
