Thiruvananthapuram: Nationalist Congress Party leader and forest minister AK Saseendran wrote to the party's national leadership requesting the appointment of Thomas K Thomas as the state president. He forwarded the letter to the national committee a day after PC Chacko resigned as president of the state committee. However, Chacko is continuing as the party’s national working committee president. 

Though Saseendran took a move favouring Thomas, majority of the party members demanded that senior vice president PK Rajan should be named as the acting president of the party until the election of the new chief. 

It is rumoured that Chacko was forced to resign as president after Saseendran and Thomas resolved their issues.

Thomas K Thomas and PC Chacko attempted to remove Saseendran from the Forest Minister post. Amid this, Thomas faced allegations of bribing two LDF MLAs to defect to the rival NCP faction led by Ajit Pawar in a bid to pressurise the Chief Minister over his cabinet berth. Following this, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took a firm stance in favour of Saseendran’s ministership.

This led the Thomas faction to join hands with Saseendran. When the Chief Minister extended his support to Saseendran, a majority of the NCP district committees backed him. After all these dramatic sequences in NCP, Chacko decided to step down as the state president.