Thiruvananthapuram: The KPCC's claim of generating 33.79 lakh memberships is being contested. At the concluding session of the recent high power Political Affairs Committee meeting, KPCC president M. M. Hassan himself had said only 40 percent of them could be taken seriously. Congress leaders themselves admit their workers had not gone door to door like the BJP and there no neighbourhood visits either. They were just ‘copy-pasting’ it from the electoral roll. At the same time, the BJP has achieved 85 percent of its booth committee formation to be completed before Oct 22.

A senior leader said while CPM and BJP have got several thousand ‘workers’ in each district, Congress has mainly ‘supporters’. “Over the last couple of years, the Congress party has alienated ordinary people. DCC presidents are more interested in inflated numbers and sending them to vice-president Rahul Gandhi,” he told DC. At a recent leadership meet, Thiruvananthapuram DCC president Neyyattinkara Sanal made an ‘emotional’ speech stating how he had been finding it difficult to bring in office bearers to meetings. KPCC president MM Hassan, and legislators K. Muraleedharan, V. S. Sivakumar and K. S. Shabarinadhan attending the meeting realised that out of 450 DCC leaders, hardly 128 turned up.

“I know DCC level leaders who took hotel room here in the capital and downloaded the voters' list and included their names on the membership list. Even underaged students figured on the list. Unfortunately, the KPCC leadership is yet to realise the strides the BJP is making in various parts of the state,” said a DCC leader. Another prominent leader compared the functioning of CPM and Congress when their general secretary Sitaram Yechury and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi were attacked or arrested. He was referring to the way CPM organised massive protests within minutes in the city when Yechury was heckled by Hindu Sena activists. But when Mr Gandhi was arrested in Madhya Pradesh during the farmers' protest, the KPCC leaders could organise a protest rally only by evening, that too thinly attended.