In the national revamp of BJP’s leadership, AP Abdulla Kutty from Kerala, who joined the party last year, has been posted as BJP’s national Vice President. Abdulla Kutty, who had started out his political career with the CPI(M), was in Congress since 2009. He quit Congress and joined the BJP in 2019. Abdulla Kutty was presently the state Vice President of BJP.
The move to appoint Abdulla Kutty, who is comparatively a newbie in the party, to a top post has been said to be apparently a minority appeasement tactics of the BJP.
While in CPI(M), Abdulla Kutty achieved prominence by defeating present Kerala Congress chief Mullappally Ramachandran twice — in 1999 and 2004 — from the Kannur Lok Sabha constituency.
In 2009, the CPI(M) sacked him from the party amid mounting differences and also because he praised Narendra Modi's Gujarat development model.
The same year, he joined the Congress and won the Assembly by-election from Kannur as a Congress candidate and found victory again in 2011. But in 2016, he lost the polls from the Thalassery seat, following which he was in limbo in the Congress politics.
In 2019, he joined the BJP. Soon, he was made the vice-president of the Kerala unit and on Saturday, got elevated as a national vice-president.
The other leaders from Kerala, who has been elevated to BJP’s national leadership, include former Congress leader Tom Vadakkan and businessman-Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Tom Vadakkan, who was in Congress for 20 years, had joined BJP last April.
Meanwhile, the present revamp of the national leadership of the party has come as a setback for seasoned BJP leaders from Kerala, including former Mizoram Governor and former Kerala BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan and PK Krishna Das. Sobha Surendran is another leader to have been excluded from the list.
The lone representative from Kerala in the Narendra Modi Cabinet is V Muraleedharan, who was elected to the Upper House from Maharashtra and is the Union Minister of State for External Affairs.
Another BJP leader who hails from Kerala is former Union Minister KJ Alphons, who is also a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan.
In Kerala, the BJP is caught between the factions of Muraleedharan and Krishna Das and at times, their differences come out in the open, which has been a cause of displeasure of the national leadership of the BJP.
Watch interview of AP Abdulla Kutty with Mathrubhumi News: