Healthy Contest For Aicc Chief'S Post Ideal: Karunakaran

Senior Congress leader and CWC member K Karunakaran, MP, yesterday said an election to choose the president for the All India Congress Committee (AICC) would be ideal to ensure intra-party democracy and to enable the party to regain its lost glory.

Answering a query at a press conference at nearby Avinissery, Karunakaran, however, hastened to add that if Sonia Gandhi came forward to accept the AICC chief post, there would be no contest as she would be accepted as the party president by all without much ado.

Karunakaran was here to inaugurate a function in which the autobiorgraphy of freedom fighter and founder secretary of Cochin Prajamandalam Congress, V R Krishna Ezhuthachan, was released.

Karunakaran said the entry of Sonia Gandhi into the party would give an electrifying effect to the organisation and its workers at all levels. He expressed the hope that Gandhi would chalk out her future plans shortly.

Karunakaran reiterated that it would be ideal for the Congress to follow the one man one post policy as it would help rejuvenate the party.

On the BJP's stand that Sonia Gandhi was a foreigner, Karunakaran said she is a member of the Nehru family and very much an Indian citizen. The founder of the Indian National Congress, A O Hume, was an eminent British national.

Besides, Annie Besant and Nelli Sengupta had served the party as its presidents though they were not born Indians, he added.

He said Sonia Gandhi's entry into the Congress party had paved the way for the Tamil Maanila Congress led by G K Moopanar to return to its parent organisation.

Earlier, on more than one occasion, Karunakaran ridiculed the reported statement of CPM leader Chadayan Govindan, that the Congress had entered into a secret electoral understanding with the BJP as the latter had not put up its candidate for the May 29 by-election.