By Ashraf Padanna/Malappuram

The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the key ally of the Congress party which heads the ruling coalition of Kerala, has asked the senior partner to set its house in order before things take a turn for the worse.

The faction owing allegiance to Ramesh Chennithala, the party’s state unit president, had last week renewed its attack on Chief Minister Oommen Chandy for his failure to induct the former as deputy chief minister or the home minister.

Chennithala, who rejected the offer of other portfolios, himself expressed displeasure with the chief minister by stating “Let Chandy run the government” as the opposition renewed its call for Chandy’s resignation claiming he had lost the support of the party.

“We cannot go ahead like this,” IUML general secretary E T Mohamed Basheer said after an emergency meeting of the party’s top brass.

“We have called a meeting of our state committee to take stock of the situation”.

Later speaking to a television channel, the lawmaker from the district said his party was worried about a repeat of 1994 and 2004 when the Congress party drew a blank in the parliamentary elections due to the intense factional feud.

The general elections are just eight months away.

The coalition government is going through its worst crisis after the arrest of a personal aide of the chief minister for his links to a woman confidence trickster in the Rs70mn ‘solar scam.’ Many buyers and investors were cheated of their money by the woman along with her aides.

The opposition has announced an indefinite siege to the state secretariat from next week demanding Chandy’s resignation.

A survey conducted for a national television and newspaper last month predicted that the opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF) would win 13 of the 20 seats leaving only four to the Congress, two to the IUML and one seat to the Kerala Congress, the third largest ally, if elections were held now.

Chandy’s public approval rating also fell sharply from 63% last year to 45%. He is now preparing for his much acclaimed mass contact programme beginning next week but Chennithala and his loyalists are likely to keep away.

“Issues should be settled without any delay and we will convey our concerns to the Congress leadership after the meeting,” said Basheer. “Unilateral decision are not possible in a coalition government”.

Basheer said the Congress party’s national leadership failed to talk to the allies and settle the issues to the satisfaction of all. He also expressed displeasure over a “concerted campaign” holding the IUML responsible for torpedoing Chennithala’s cabinet entry by sticking to its claim to the deputy chief ministerial post.

“Everything should be clean and transparent. They could have asked us about alternative solutions,” he said. “It was not easy for us to convince our supporters why we should compromise on the second slot in the government. Our organisation has problems with it,” Basheer said.

The IUML has 20 legislators in the 73-member ruling coalition, winning 20 of the 24 seats it contested two years ago. The party with a strong clout in the Malabar region fears that the present crisis would hit its electoral prospects as well and the extremist groups in the community would take advantage.

How long will the calm last?

An uneasy calm prevails in the state unit of the Congress party after its president Ramesh Chennithala announced that he would not be joining Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s cabinet, as was feverishly speculated. “Never before has the state seen such reporting by TV channels. Reporters reached their own conclusions, then blamed us, as if what they formulated was the opinion of the party,” senior Congress legislator Dominic Presentation said. Presentation, however, ignored the context in which the media began its speculation - factionalism in the party is as old as the party itself, and squabbles intensify when the Congress is in power. The only time a Congress chief minister ever completed his five-year tenure in the state was in 1987 - that feat was achieved by K Karunakaran. On another occasion, Karunakaran stepped down in 1995 as chief minister, making way for A K Antony. And Antony had to make way in 2004 for Chandy. With the party high command on Friday agreeing to Chennithala’s request to continue as president, the next round of a possible reshuffle in the cabinet will most likely wait till the completion of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Both Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Chennithala refused to respond to queries about internal party matters. People in the state, however, are unused to any truce between rival factions in the Congress lasting long. The party high command has urged all leaders in the state to maintain discipline. It remains to be seen, though, how long the “guns will remain silent”.