Thiruvananthapuram: Responding to Nair Service Society (NSS) general secretary G Sukumaran Nair's allegation that the UDF lost the 2021 State Assembly elections because Ramesh Chennithala was named the chief ministerial candidate, the senior Congress leader on Monday said his name was never in the running for the post.

Talking to the media, he said neither the UDF nor the Congress projected anyone as the CM candidate during the campaign for the last assembly elections. “The approach taken by the party was that the elected MLAs would decide the CM after the election," said Chennithala.

Once considered close to the NSS and Sukumaran Nair, Chennithala also sought to distance himself from the outfit and its leader, saying he belongs to the Congress party which always upholds a secular position.

"For the past 45 years, I have upheld that secular stance in public and personal life. So I will always be a part of secularism. There is no question of going back from it. I have always been a Congressman and the Congress Party is the biggest for me," said Chennithala, who was the Leader Of Opposition during the previous Left government's period.

The NSS leadership had claimed that Chennithala was appointed as Home Minister in 2013 after Sukumaran Nair stated that the UDF will lose the Assembly polls if a person from the Hindu community is not given a position equivalent to that of the chief minister in the then Oommen Chandy-led government.

The Congress leader said he was brought up politically by his party and all positions he held in his political life were gifted by it.

The Congress-led alliance suffered a humiliating defeat in the Assembly polls held in 2021, which saw the CPM-led LDF rewriting history by becoming the first government to get a second term in Kerala in four decades.

Opposition will be criticised as much as govt: VD Satheesan

Congress leader and current Leader of Opposition, V D Satheesan, played down Sukumaran Nair's statement, saying the opposition will be criticised as much as the government.

He said he has no intolerance towards such criticism.

Satheesan said it cannot be said that community organisations should not criticise the political leadership.

Noting that he has criticised the community organisations before, the Congress leader said he will continue to do so if such a situation arises.

He also said both majority communalism and minority communalism will be strongly opposed.

Besides Chennithala, Satheesan and AICC general secretary K C Venugopal, all belonging to the Nair community, were once considered close to the NSS leadership.

The relationship strained later, and it further deepened after the outfit started throwing its weight behind Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor, who began to assert his position in Kerala politics post the AICC presidential election in which he lost to Congress veteran Mallikarjun Kharge.

It was Tharoor who inaugurated NSS founder-leader Mannathu Padmanabhan's 146th Jayanthi celebration on January 2 at the NSS headquarters at Perunna in Kottayam.

(With PTI inputs)