Council member elected chairman of Kochi Prefecture’s Standing Committee on Construction

On Saturday, June 22, Congress member VK Minimol was elected as the chairman of the Kochi City Construction Standing Committee.

In the nine-member committee, Minimolu defeated Deepa Varma of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) by a margin of 5 to 4. The election was necessitated after Sunita Dixon, a lawmaker from the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a member of the United Democratic Front (UDF), ran for the post of chairperson on April 11.

The election had to be postponed as the model code of conduct was already in place by then. The Congress camp feared that Dixon would sabotage the election but she did not and followed the party’s instructions.

According to the Congress, Dickson was due to step down in a year and a half by 2022, as originally agreed. Later, when the UDF brought a motion of no confidence against him, Dickson violated a party whip issued by RSP district secretary George Stephen and voted in favour of the motion to remove him as Speaker. He had abstained along with the ruling LDF at the time.

Minimol subsequently applied for disqualification with the Electoral Commission for leaving the party. The Congress argued that Dickson faced the possibility of being disqualified and banned from running for election for six years, and ultimately resigned.

“The District Congress Committee (DCC) will take a decision on the withdrawal of the election petition. The DCC has put the petition on hold till after the elections and she [Ms. Dixon] “I voted for UDF in the elections,” Minimol said.

Dickson, however, had always maintained that his term was originally set for two-and-a-half years and that he had stepped down at the end of that term. He said any misgivings about his support for the UDF candidate in the election for chairman of the Standing Committee on Public Works were unfounded.

“I resigned after the RSP took a decision to that effect and not because of any agreement. The decision to resign is based on political morality. I no longer have any basis not to withdraw the election petition,” Dixon said.

George Stephen said the UDF has undertaken not to go ahead with the election petition as agreed as the councillor followed the party platform. “Even if the petition is not withdrawn, it will have little impact as I will be summoned before the Election Commission issues its order at which point I will state that she followed the party platform and will oppose her disqualification,” he said.