Reporter’s diary: Kalaignar’s birth anniversary revives faction rivalry in Cong

On Monday, when the TNCC president KS Alagiri and other senior leaders queued up at ally DMK’s headquarter Anna Arivalayam to pay floral tributes to Karunanidhi, former deputy Mayor and Congress leader Karate S Thiagarajan observed the former CM’s anniversary at Sathyamurthy Bhavan. 

Congress office-bearers offered flowers to a picture of Kalaignar, who died in August last year, at their head office and it raised eyebrows of a section of leaders. Even though DMK was Congress’s biggest ally in the country, some could not help but wonder why a photograph of another party’s leader should be kept in the Congress party office.

The murmurs seem to have revived the factional rivalry in the party. The rival groups have cited former TNCC president Su Thirunavukkarasar organising anniversary of AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran at the Bhavan. Revival of the factional rivalry in Congress has come at a time when the party won eight out of the nine LS seats it contested in the state as part of the DMK alliance which won 37 seats. In 2014 LS polls, Congress had lost in all the seats in the state.