Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 17 A day after Congress' social media unit head in Kerala, P. Sarin claimed that the party is repeating the same mistakes in Kerala bypolls as it did in the Haryana Assembly elections, he was on Thursday expelled from the party.
This announcement from the Congress state unit came minutes after Sarin, addressing a press meeting in his home district Palakkad, said he is fed up with the Congress as he always was taking a position of the Left in the party.
"I have now been informed of my ouster from the Congress and I request the CPI-M led Left to see if they have a place for me in their scheme of things. If the CPI-M asks, I will contest," said Sarin, who accused Leader of Opposition V.D.Satheesan of having a soft stand towards the BJP.
With his exit now a reality, the CPI-M, which has been watching keenly the developments, is mulling inducting him and fielding him from Palakkad.
Veteran CPI-M Central Committee member A.K.Balan, soon after Sarin’s exit, said what is next now is that the Palakkad district committee will discuss and debate and they will inform the state party headquarters and the party will decide.
The party's Palakkad district Secretary Suresh Babu said things are emerging and let it take place and the party will take the appropriate decision.
A medical doctor by profession, Sarin quit the civil service in 2016 and joined the Congress. In the 2021 Assembly polls, he lost to K. Premkumar of the CPI-M from the Ottapalam Assembly constituency by around 15,000 votes. He has been upset for a while ever since he got the feeling that he stands no chance of being fielded. His outburst on Wednesday that if the high command listens to only one side of the section of the party, then Haryana-like results will be repeated in Palakkad and if the Congress-led UDF candidate loses, it will be a defeat of senior party leader Rahul Gandhi and not of candidate Rahul Mamkootathil, was dismissed by Satheesan and other party leaders who felt that he was on the verge of quitting the party.
Reacting to Sarin’s exit, Satheesan said for a while. Sarin has been testing the waters and he even tried to build bridges with the BJP, and hence his outburst was natural.
"We knew what Sarin was up to and hence we are least surprised by what he did," he said.
The rift in the Congress over the Palakkad candidate has brought cheer to both the CPI-M-led Left and the BJP as the constituency in the past two elections has seen a very tight triangular contest. In the 2021 Assembly polls, the BJP candidate E. Sreedharan lost to Congress legislator Shafi Parambil by less than 4,000 votes. Parambil's resignation on winning the Lok Sabha elections had necessitated the bypoll.
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