THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As efforts to bring in a thaw in the strained relations between Kerala Congress leader R Balakrishna Pillai and his Minister son KB Ganesh Kumar are yet to bear any desired results, the UDF is poised to confront pressure tactics from both of them, even when it is clear that the ruling dispensation cannot afford to distance an MLA in the current scenario.While Pillai is mounting pressure on the UDF leadership to make his son accountable to him and the party, Ganesh Kumar is outsmarting his father on the strength of the fact that the UDF cannot ditch him, given the fragile majority of the Chandy Government in the Assembly. That the UDF leadership has already conveyed the point to Pillai emboldens the stance of Ganesh.Though the secretariat meet of KC (B) held here on Friday had desisted from asking the UDF to drop the minister from the cabinet, Balakrishna Pillai is in no mood to allow his son to act on his own and wants him to obey the commands of the party.More than anyone else, the Nair Service Society piloted a damage control exercise since both Pillai and Ganesh are its high profile taluk union office-bearers, but in vain. NSS general secretary G Sukumaran Nair had arranged a reconciliation meet at Perunna the other day, but only Pillai turned up.Ganesh had reportedly informed that he will not yield to any compromise with his father. He also told the NSS leadership to inform his father that he is ready to quit the ministership, apparently putting the ball in the court of the UDF.“Ganesh is simply making use of the helplessness of the UDF Government. He is the lone MLA of the KC (B). He has to either correct himself or resign his Assembly membership and seek re-election, instead of making tall claims such as he does not want the help of the party to win an election,” feels the NSS, which has aligned with Pillai in the current feud.“One who was allotted a seat to contest in the name of the party should accept the party first”, says Balakrishna Pillai.“He should correct himself. He should function in the manner of other ministers representing various constituent parties“, he added. But Ganesh Kumar maintains that he will not be one who could be cowed down through threats. “I’ll not heed to any directives which is unfair,” he said. The flare-up in the KC(B) is essentially a father-son feud, despite the outward plank of the minister’s reluctance to obey the party and its demands.“If Ganesh adopts a style of attending to the genuine demands of his party workers, all issues will be settled,“ said Sukumaran Nair. Interestingly, the opposition LDF is nowhere in the scene, to cash in on the situation in KC(B).Instead, rumours of Ganesh Kumar floating his own outfit and merging it after some time in the Congress is doing the rounds. For Pillai, he can hardly think of the Left camp for refugee at present.
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