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Karunakaran to submit report on Orissa Congress by month-end

Senior Congress leader K Karunakaran, who is heading a four-member All India Congress Committee team to elicit opinions about the possible revamp of the Pradesh Congress Committee in Orissa, today said he would submit his report to the party president by the end of the month.

Karunakaran, along with Mohsina Kidwai, K K Tewari and Raju Parmar, arrived in Bhubaneswar last evening to hold discussions with party functionaries on the reasons for the party's poor performance in the state in the last Lok Sabha election and a revamp of the PCC.

The former Kerala chief minister told newsmen that the team was satisfied with the discussions it had with Congress leaders and party workers, and would submit a positive report to AICC president Sonia Gandhi.

Karunakaran said as a fact-finding team, their purpose was to study the reasons for the party's poor poll performance in the last Lok Sabha election.

The senior Congress leader said the AICC team met about six hundred party workers and leaders yesterday and discussed with them the poll performance and a possible revamp of the organisation.

Karunakaran said besides, he had also received a number of memoranda from Congressmen. All these would be carefully looked into before submitting the final report to the AICC president.

Asked whether the high command would go by consensus in choosing a new PCC chief, Karunakaran said consensus was also a healthy democratic process.

The senior Congress leader also clarified that the party had not yet taken any decision on strictly adhering to the one-man one-post policy.

Referring to the clash near Congress Bhavan during his discussion with party leaders and workers yesterday, Karunakaran said he came to know about the incident only through newspapers this morning.

He, however, denied that Congressmen were involved in the clash. ''It was rather the action of certain anti-socials who wanted to exploit the situation,'' he remarked.

He, however, said he had asked the chief minister and PCC chief to find out if any Congressman was involved in yesterday's clash and if so, take strong disciplinary action. Karunakaran ruled out that that there was any organised move by Congressmen to create a disturbance.

When asked about the attack on Deputy Chief Minister Basant Kumar Biswal inside Congress Bhavan, Karunakaran said Biswal had not told him anything about the incident but he had received a letter from him, and refused to divulge the contents of it.

UNI

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