Assembly poll effect: DMK-baiter Tagore is new Tamil Nadu Congress chief

CHENNAI: B Manickam Tagore, the senior leader who was in the forefront of the campaign for revitalising the party in the State, was on Saturday appointed as the new president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC).

Tagore brings more than three decades of organisational experience, after beginning his political career through the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) in the 1990s before holding several key positions in the Youth Congress and the AICC.

The three-time MP from Virudhunagar, who is also the Congress’s Lok Sabha Whip and AICC in-charge for Andhra Pradesh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, replaced K Selvaperunthagai, whose poll strategies and post-poll moves and comments made it untenable to continue in the position.

While a section of the party, including Selvaperunthagai, favoured maintaining close coordination with the DMK in the election, Tagore led the group of dissenters who consistently argued that the Congress should seek a share in power and negotiate electoral arrangements that would fetch it greater respect and representation.

After the poor showing in the Assembly election, winning only 5 of the 28 seats it contested, the high command initiated an internal review of its organisational functioning. During the review, the fact-finding committee headed by former MP K Jayakumar received several complaints about organisational functioning and candidate selection.

A section of party workers even alleged that Selvaperunthagai collected money to allocate tickets and had become too closely aligned with the DMK. Though these allegations have not been proved, at least publicly, sources said they were among the key factors that led to the change of guard.

It did not help that Selvaperunthagai began publicly airing comments critical of the TVK, including its leader and Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay, most recently about his gesture inside the Assembly mocking DMK president MK Stalin and over alleged governance failures.

On the other hand, Tagore, along with Praveen Chakravarty, played a key role in discussions with the national leadership during the post-election political developments that eventually led to the formation of a new alliance with TVK in Tamil Nadu and helped bring it back to the Tamil Nadu Cabinet for the first time since 1967.