Published Apr 28, 2026 | 4:52 PM ⚊ Updated Apr 28, 2026 | 4:52 PM
The banners condemning Satheesan for 'tainting senior leaders appeared overnight.
If there is a constant in the Congress party, it’s the power struggle.
The party has been out of power in Kerala for a decade after the state decided against alternating between the two major fronts, the LDF and UDF, five years ago, and gave the former an extension at the helm.
The 9 April election to the state Assembly has given the Congress hope to return to power after 10 years in the wilderness. The party went to the polls without a chief ministerial candidate, and post-polling, multiple leaders have been covertly aiming for the Chief Minister’s Office.
Though the leaders and party have been presenting a facade of unity in public, clandestine moves are being made to garner support—both at the state level and national level—to win the chief minister’s post.
A potent weapon multiple camps are using is public relations, even with the tacit support of professionals with years of experience under their belt.
Incidentally, no one admits to employing PR tactics to advance their cause, for they want the public to believe that mass support makes leaders. And PR is considered a sure way to garner that support.
However, people are not living in a delulu world, as many politicians would like to believe.
The PR machinery — or the lack of it — once again came to the fore as flex banners appeared in front of the Ernakulam District Congress Committee (DCC) office overnight.
The banners targeted Opposition leader VD Satheesan, a forerunner in the race to the chief minister’s office.
One banner condemned Satheesan for using ‘PR’ to ‘taint’ senior leaders like ‘Rameshji’ (Ramesh Chennithala, purportedly another leader in the race) to grab the chief minister’s post. It also carried a nice caricature of the Opposition leader.
Another banner exhorted Satheesan to “stop the PR work”, and added the party high command would decide the chief minister.
The banners, it claimed, were put up by the “Indian National Congress Family” — whose members so far apparently remain unknown even to the DCC members.
Interestingly, though the DCC office has several surveillance cameras, sources indicated that the party is unlikely to check the footage to find those behind the banners.
Meanwhile, in a separate ‘PR’ development, Chennithala’s office distanced itself from a full-page focus feature in an English daily that eulogised the leader’s rise from being a KSU worker to his current stature. The hagiography was sponsored by Prajin Babu, a leader in Thiruvananthapuram.
Notably, the focus feature appeared soon after KPCC president Sunny Joseph had urged party workers against promoting leaders on television, social or print media.
