AICC announces core committee to steer electioneering and prevent factionalism in poll year in Kerala

The All India Congress Committee (AICC) has announced a core committee to steer electioneering in Kerala. The former Chief Minister A.K. Antony is the senior-most member on the panel. 

The AICC, at a stroke, has attempted to prevent possible dissensions in leadership during the crucial election year by forming a collective of seniors and youngsters to oversee the local body polls in 2025 and the Assembly elections in 2026.

Moreover, some party insiders viewed the AICC decision as a move to pre-empt self-defeating lobbying between top functionaries for Congress’s prospective Chief Ministership after the Assembly polls. 

It also hopes to achieve apex-level consensus in local-body-candidate selection to stymie mutinies, factional one-upmanship and potential rebel candidates. A Congress insider said the AICC also wanted to prevent such ward-level disputes from metastasising into factional dissensions at the Assembly-constituency level in 2026. 

The core committee will supersede other organisational panels, including the “oversized” Political Affairs Committee, which the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) reconstituted recently. Notably, the committee accommodates influential factional leaders and ensures representation for women and youth. 

Convener

Deepa Dasmunshi, AICC general secretary in-charge of Kerala, is the convener. The members include Sunny Joseph, V.D. Satheesan, K.C. Venugopal, Ramesh Chennithala, Shashi Tharoor, K. Sudhakaran, Kodikunnil Suresh, K. Muraleedharan, V.M. Sudheeran, Mullappally Ramachandran, Adoor Prakash, A.P. Anil Kumar and M.M. Hassan. P.C. Vishnunath, Shafi Parambil and Shanimol Usman are the relatively young members of the committee.

The AICC had on Tuesday summoned the KPCC leadership to Delhi for discussions. It found that top-heavy, unwieldy, and elephantine committees—often a recipe for intra-party feuding—would bog down the Congress’s election machinery. Hence, it sanctioned the core committee to respond quickly to election-era exigencies and simultaneously signal unity of purpose and collective leadership to the rank and file.