Tamil Nadu Congress chief to step down after poll rout

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Chennai, May 14 : Accepting moral responsibility for the party's rout in the assembly elections, Tamil Nadu Congress chief K.V. Thangkabalu has decided to step down from his post.
Announcing this here Saturday, Thangkabalu said he has decided to resign his party post accepting responsibility for the party's election defeat.
The resignation letter would be sent to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, he said.
Contrary to its hopes for victory in 63 seats, the Congress in Tamil Nadu won just five seats and only three of its 34 legislators were able to retain seats.
Thangkabalu himself leads the losers' list in the state. He was humbled in Mylapore seat by AIADMK's R. Rajalakshmi by a margin of 29,204 votes.
Several leading lights of the party like deputy leader of the Congress legislature party D. Yashoda, Peter Alphonse and C. Gnanasekaran lost their seats.
During the seat sharing negotiations, the party was adamant on getting 63 seats, which incensed the alliance leader DMK, which has 18 MPs, to threaten a pull-out of its nominees in the central government.
However, during the run-up to the elections, even DMK leaders were expecting the Congress to win in only 10 out of 63 seats.
The Congress's youth brigade too did not fare well despite the youth wing claiming to have a membership of over a million in the state.
There was interesting drama at the time Thangkabalu filed his nomination as party cadres were opposed to him being the party's candidate.
Originally the Congress high command had announced his wife Jayanthi Thangkabalu as the candidate from Mylapore constituency.
The Election Commission rejected her nomination citing the lack of some documents. Mylapore is a dominantly middle class area in the heart of Chennai. There was severe opposition to his wife's candidature from party workers.
Thangkabalu had filed his nomination as the party's alternate candidate.
This in turn sparked further protests, with furious party activists demonstrating outside the party leader's residence in this city and burning his effigy.
Former city mayor R. Thiagarajan, a loyalist of Home Minister P. Chidambaram, had sought the party's mandate to contest from Mylapore.
Outgoing legislator S.Ve. Shekhar too had sought renomination. He won the seat in 2006 as the AIADMK's candidate and later joined the Congress.
According to party insiders, the resignation announcement could be to blunt the daggers that have been drawn by Thangkabalu's opponents within the party.