As Sanjay Nirupam now takes a swipe, how K C Venugopal came to have a seat at the Congress high table

In his first remarks as he joined the Shinde Shiv Sena after being expelled from the Congress for “indiscipline” and “anti-party statements”, former Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam hit out at the party, calling it “organisationally disturbed”.

“Many have already pointed this out. The Congress today has five power centres with different lobbies and people like me who are not part of any lobby suffer. These five power centres are Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and general secretary K C Venugopal,” Nirupam, who rebelled after he failed to get the ticket from the Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat, said.

It was another confirmation of the importance of Venugopal in the Congress scheme of things, having emerged as the eyes and ears of Rahul. Other leaders at other times have accused Venugopal of controlling access to the de facto Congress supreme leader.

For Venugopal (or “KC” as he is called in the party circles), who was once considered a part of the “reformist” young brigade of the Congress in Kerala, seeking to rid it of the control of veterans K Karunakaran and A K Antony, it is quite a U-turn.

It was in 1991 that Venugopal first came to limelight when Karunakaran, the then Kerala Chief Minister and his mentor, got him a Lok Sabha ticket from Kasaragod. Just 28 at the time and president of the party’s student wing, Venugopal lost narrowly.

By 1995, he had gone against Karunakaran publicly over the decision of then Congress president and prime minister P V Narasimha Rao to suspend Arjun Singh from the primary membership of the party. Karunakaran had aligned with Rao on the move.

By the time Karunakaran made way for A K Antony as Kerala CM in the March of 1995, Venugopal had moved further away,