After the party’s humiliating defeat in the recent assembly elections in five states, a round of mud-pelting has started within the Congress. Organization general secretary KC Venugopal is being blamed for this defeat. KC Venugopal is considered very close to former Congress President Rahul Gandhi and is a target of G-23 leaders. However, party insiders say that KC Venugopal is to Rahul Gandhi what the late Ahmed Patel was to Sonia Gandhi.
KC Venugopal first came into limelight in 1991 when the then Chief Minister of Kerala Karunakaran gave him a Lok Sabha ticket from Kasaragod. The then president of the party’s student wing, 28-year-old Venugopal, lost the election in a close contest. At the same time, in 1995, he had publicly turned against Karunakaran over the decision of the then Congress President and Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao to suspend Arjun Singh from the primary membership of the party.
KC Venugopal first became an MLA in 1996, after which he came again winning elections in 2001 and 2006. In 2004, he became a minister in the Oman Chandi government. In 2009, he won the Lok Sabha elections from Alappuzha and became an MP. When the Congress was virtually wiped out across the country in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Venugopal was among a handful of MPs who won from Kerala and was made the party’s whip.
Like Ahmed Patel, who was close to Sonia Gandhi, Venugopal is also said to have given evidence of his political acumen. People trusted by him say that it was Venugopal who persuaded Rahul Gandhi to contest from the second seat in Kerala in the 2019 elections because he had sensed the political wind in Uttar Pradesh.
Venugopal is currently a Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan. On the other hand, after the defeat in the assembly elections in the Congress party, rebellious tones are being seen. The leaders of G-23 are continuously making rhetoric and in the meantime the round of meetings is going on. Manish Tewari was the NSUI chief when Venugopal was the President of the Kerala Students’ Union from 1987-1992. The MP from Anandpur Sahib is also one of the G-23 members and has expressed his dismay over the defeat in the recent assembly elections.