Ex-Minister, Expelled By Congress, Says He Got No Communication About It

A day after being expelled from the Congress party for alleged anti-party activities, rebel leader and former Union Minister K V Thomas on Friday said that he did not get any formal communication about his expulsion from the leadership and he was still a member of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), a claim which outrightly was rejected by senior party leaders.

Stating that Congress is a way of thought, culture and emotion for him, he said how could anyone change that perspective and what the leadership could do maximum was to remove him from the primary membership.

Mocking at KPCC chief K Sudhakaran's late night announcement that he was expelled, Mr Thomas said there are a number of persons named K V Thomas in the state and the KPCC Chief might have mistakenly said it was he who was expelled.

"There is a system to expel a leader from the party. The decision should be taken by the AICC. I am still a member of the KPCC and AICC. It (the claim of expulsion) is just a joke," he told reporters in Kochi.

Alleging that the Congress has lost its significance and vigour at the national level, he said certain leaders were posing like they were the party.

However, he maintained that he would not join the ruling CPI(M) or any other party and would remain a Congress man.

Meanwhile, AICC general secretary K C Venugopal said the leadership was forced to take the extreme step as the rebel leader continued to violate party discipline even after disciplinary action was taken against him by the AICC recently.

Unlike the CPI(M), the Congress is a party where people have the freedom to express their voice of dissent but what Mr Thomas did was to join hands with the ruling party at a time when the country and his own party were passing through a critical period.

Rejecting Mr Thomas's claim that only AICC could take action against him and he did not get any formal communication regarding the expulsion, Mr Venugopal said the respective PCCs have the power to take action against those who act against the party during the election.

The former minister would realise soon that he was nobody without the banner of the Congress party, he said.

Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly V D Satheesan also shared similar sentiments, saying the party was happily saying good-bye to Mr Thomas.

Not just the Congress workers but the activists of the Marxist party were also seeing KV Thomas with contempt and disdain, he alleged.

He also criticised Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who shared a dais with Mr Thomas on Thursday saying that he was receiving "traitors" draping a shawl.

Senior party leader and MP, K Muraleedharan also came out against Thomas, saying that he was a person who had enjoyed enough posts and positions in his decades-long political career.

The party took action against Thomas on Thursday night, hours after the veteran shared the stage with CPI(M) leader and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi VIjayan in a bypoll meeting of the Left party-led front in Kochi.

The KPCC chief made the significant announcement in Udaipur in Rajasthan, where Congress' three-day 'Chintan Shivir', a brainstorming session, began this morning.

The senior AICC member, who had been at loggerheads with the party's state leadership, recently made it clear that he would campaign for the ruling LDF candidate Jo Joseph in the upcoming by-poll in the Thrikkakara Assembly constituency,

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)