Thrissur: Congress will field new candidates in Alappuzha and Kannur in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. An agreement regarding this was reached in the KPCC meeting held in Thrissur. AICC General Secretary Deepadas Munshi was in attendance at the meeting.
Although Kodikunnil Suresh MP said that he was not interested in contesting in the general election, preferring to work at the organisational level, other leaders who attended the meeting asked him to contest in the Mavelikkara constituency, which he currently represents.
This is not the first time that Suresh has made such a request. In the two-day leadership conclave at Sulthan Bathery in Wayanad in May 2023, Suresh expressed his desire to stay away from Parliamentary politics. But that was turned down. Previously Suresh had tasted defeat in the 1998 and 2004 Lok Sabha elections.
Some media reports also suggested that there was a strong anti-incumbency factor against him in the constituency. If the party fields him from Mavelikkara eventually, it will be his eighth outing in the constituency.
KPCC president K Sudhakaran had earlier informed the party that he would not be contesting. The party decided to field new faces in Kannur and Alappuzha after K C Venugopal, the general secretary in charge of organisational duties, told the state leaders he would not be contesting from Alappuzha.
The party has set up a four-member sub-committee comprising senior leaders to shortlist the candidates. Sudhakaran, opposition leader V D Satheesan, M M Hasan and Ramesh Chennithala are the members of the panel.
Members of the sub-committee will meet with sitting MPs and office-bearers of each Lok Sabha constituency before finalising the candidate. The election campaign will be intensified under the leadership of the sub-committee in the constituencies of the sitting MPs who have less chance of winning, party sources said.
