Kasaragod: Four-and-a-half months after the much-publicised but bitter merger of Congress rebels with the party in East Eleri grama panchayat, the official faction became rebels on Tuesday. And the party lost the post of the grama panchayat president, once again. And once again, the CPM pulled the rug from under the feet of the Congress.
On Tuesday, Joseph Mutholil (59)- an advocate by profession and the most senior Congressman on the 16-member panchayat board- was elected president of the East Eleri Grama panchayat. But he was not the official candidate of the Congress.
The Kasaragod District Congress Committee (DDC) had fielded Vineeth T Joseph (46) for the post. Vineeth was part of the Democratic Development Front (DDF), the rebel group led by the mercurial James Panthamakkal, which merged with the Congress in November 2022.
For the past eight years, Panthamakkal's DDF was controlling the gram panchayat, first on its own and then with the support of the CPM. "This election would not have happened if the DDF had not returned to the Congress. That's why the party decided to field a member from the DDF for the post of president to appreciate their coming home," district Congress president P K Faisal told Onmanorama.
But the Congress workers and leaders who stood with the party had other ideas. They were fed up with the party leadership yielding to the demands of Panthamakkal.
So Joseph Mutholil wrote to the CPM seeking the party's support.
In the 16-member panchayat board, the CPM has two members, Satheedevi P V, and K K Mohanan. Of the remaining 14 members, seven belonged to the erstwhile DDF, and seven to the Congress.
DCC president Faisal issued a whip directing all 14 members to vote for Vineeth Joseph. But he got only seven votes. Advocate Mutholil got nine votes, including two votes from the CPM members.
"We voted for Mutholil because he wrote to our party seeking our votes, and we wanted to defeat Panthamakkal," said Mohanan.
A miffed Faisal told Onmanorama that the Congress leaders of the panchayat made two mistakes. "One, they defied the whip issued by the DCC president, and two, they sought the help of the CPM. They will face disciplinary action," he said.
Later, the DCC president issued a statement saying he had disbanded the East Eleri Mandalam Committee. He also announced an inquiry to find the Congress leaders who were behind the defeat of the official candidate.
'We build the party, not DDF'
Congress leaders in East Eleri are angry with the District Congress Committee for succumbing to Panthamakkal's pressure, disregarding the emotions and efforts of party workers who stood by the Congress in the past decade.
In 2015, Panthamakkal's DDF reduced the Congress to one member in East Eleri grama panchayat, a bastion of the party.
The DDF, with 10 members, became the first independent block to control a grama panchayat in Kerala. In the melee, the CPM managed to increase its tally to four.
But in 2020, the Congress fought back and won seven seats. The DDF also won only seven and had to seek the support of the CPM's two members to control the panchayat.
But after K Sudhakaran was appointed as the state president of the Congress in June 2021, he started working towards bringing the rebels of East Eleri back into the party's fold.
He later deputed DCC president Faisal and Kasaragod Lok Sabha member Rajmohan Unnithan as his emissaries.
On November 3, 2022, with the rebels by his side, Sudhakaran announced the merger of the DDF with the Congress.
There were two conditions: The Congress would give the DDF four seats on the 13-member board of the party-controlled East Eleri Service Cooperative Bank; and in return, Panthamakkal would step down as the panchayat president and help elect Adv Mutholi to the post.
The Congress kept its end of the bargain by giving four seats on the bank's board of directors to the DDF. The party kept eight seats for itself and gave one seat to the ally IUML.
But Panthamakkal almost pulled off a coup in the bank by winning over three Congress directors. He fielded his candidate for the post of the bank's president. But luck favoured the Congress, twice.
First, one of the DDF's directors cast an invalid vote, and the DDF's Chacko Elanjimattathil and the Congress's P M Mathew Padinjarel were tied with seven votes each. The presiding officer broke the tie by drawing a lot, and it was Padinjarel.
But Congress workers and leaders in East Eleri were livid with Panthamakkal's act of 'treachery'. They called for the breaking of the proposed merger. But the district leadership leaned on the Mandalam Committee, and the merger happened as scheduled on November 20.
The shady land challenge
On February 21, three months after the merger James Panthamakkal resigned as the president of East Eleri grama panchayat.
The CPM and the Congress leaders said he resigned because he was not able to implement his dream tourism project at Munayamkunnu. "The project included the panchayat buying around 20 acres at inflated prices," said CPM panchayat member Mohanan.
That's when the differences between the CPM and the DDF started cropping up. "He set up a land challenge committee which will buy up plots and then sell them to the panchayat for a tourism project," he said.
But Tahsildar and the panchayat secretary found the rate exorbitant and refused to give their approval, he said. "That's when he resigned," said the CPM member.
Proposed his name again
But the erstwhile DDF and the Congress could not agree on the next panchayat president. Vice-president Philomina Johny Akkattu, who was also part of the DDF, presented the panchayat budget without the president.
On March 28, the East Eleri Congress Mandalam Committee met and proposed the name of Joseph Mutholil for the post of president. But the DCC was inclined to name a former rebel for the post to facilitate the assimilation of the rebels into the Congress.
On April 3, the DCC president Faisal called the parliamentary board meeting of 14 panchayat members. "The DDF members proposed the name of Panthamakkal for the president's post and the Congress proposed the name of Mutholil. The two sides had seven members each," said Faisal.
So he proposed that Panthamakkal and Mutholil take turns to be the president for the remaining two years. "Again they could not agree on who would be president first," he said.
As a compromise, the DCC president named Vineeth Joseph from the rebel camp as the official candidate and issued a whip late Tuesday night.
But by then the Congress leaders had mutated into rebels and had sent their missive to the CPM.
