Team News Riveting
Kochi, June 8
Having faced humiliating defeat at the hands of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Congress had decided to bet on the leader who had been vocal against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
The All India Congress Committee (AICC) today appointed K Sudhakaran as the President of Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). He would replace Mullappally Ramachandran, who had been under the lens following the party’s unexpected performance in the recently concluded state polls in which Pinarayi created history for coming to power for the second time in succession.
Sudhakaran, a sitting Member of Parliament from Kannur, had been known for wrong reasons. Besides being misogynistic, he had been in controversy for passing personal comments on Pinarayi.
“What is Pinarayi’s family? Chethukarude kudumbam (toddy tappers family). Pinarayi Vijayan, who held the revolutionary flame of the working class from a family of toddy-tappers and led you from the front holding the red flag, where is he now? A CM who rose from the toddy tappers’ family needs a helicopter to travel. He will be the first CM in Kerala to do so,” Sudhakaran had said at an election rally led by the then Opposition Ramesh Chennithala in Thalassery.
The caste-based comment was widely criticised. Sudhakaran during a speech in Kasaragod district in 2019 made a sexist comment when he took on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and charged that his governance showed that he was “worse than a woman.” In 2019, he also led Congress’s protest against the entry of women into the Sabarimala temple.
His campaign video for the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 attracted wrath as well, for portraying women in a sexist manner and alleging that women aren’t useful. In 2013, he even raised questioned over the character of a rape survivor in Suryanelli.
