December 4, 2025 03:10 PM IST
First published on: Dec 4, 2025 at 02:51 PM IST
Minutes after a court rejected the anticipatory bail plea of legislator Rahul Mamkootathil, the Congress in Kerala expelled him from the party. Mamkootathil, who had been suspended by the party in the wake of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, has now been removed from the primary membership of the Congress.
Congress state president Sunny Joseph, in a statement, said that the decision was taken considering the cases registered against him and other complaints that have emerged since.
“The party high command has been consulted in this regard. It is better that he quit as a legislator. The Congress has never protected him. When allegations came up in the media, we suspended him and removed him from the legislative party of the Congress, which kept him away from the Congress benches in the assembly. Our action is exemplary in this regard,” he told the media in Idukki.
The Congress, which had been criticised in the past weeks for not acting decisively, showed its former Youth Congress president the door after police registered two rape cases against him in a week. On Thursday, the party decision came soon after the district sessions court in Thiruvananthapuram rejected his pre-arrest bail application.
Since last Friday, after police booked him on charges of allegedly raping a woman and forcing her to undergo an abortion, the MLA from Palakkad constituency has allegedly been absconding. On Tuesday, another woman levelled allegations of sexual abuse that took place in 2023. The latest complaint, mailed to the party state leadership, was handed over to the police, leading to the registration of the second FIR against Mamkootathil.
Party on defensive
The scandal involving the party MLA had cast a shadow over the Congress at a time when local body elections were a week away. The decision to sack Mamkootathil from the party stemmed from the realisation that the scandal could affect the prospects of Congress-led UDF, which is struggling for a comeback in the local body elections and assembly elections five months away. With the sacking, Congress hopes to turn the tables on the CPI(M).
A native of central Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district, Mamkootathil is currently the MLA of Palakkad, a seat he won last November in a byelection, which was necessitated after the victory of incumbent legislator Shafi Parambil in the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Vadakara. Among the young Congress faces, Mamkootathil had been a star on the rise and the party’s voice on TV debates. That helped him get elected as the Youth Congress state president in 2023. And though he faced allegations of rigging the voters’ list in the organisational election in his favour, he managed to sail through the controversy.
Within the Congress, Mamkootathil was believed to have the backing of Opposition Leader V D Satheesan and MP Shafi Parambil. This, party leaders say, helped him get a ticket to contest the byelections in Palakkad despite protests from several local contenders.
On Wednesday, M A Shahanas, a leader of the Congress’s cultural and literary outfit, Samskara Sahithi, had alleged that Mamkootathil had sent her inappropriate messages when she returned from Delhi after taking part in the farmers’ agitation. She also alleged that she had warned Parambil about him in the past, but was ignored.