Veteran political leader KR Gowri Amma from Kerala has stepped down as the General Secretary of the JSS (Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi), a post that she has held for long. However, she will continue in JSS in the position of President.
Current president AN Rajan Babu will take up the general secretary post and incumbent secretary Sanjeev Somarajan has been appointed as the acting president.
The decision was taken owing to Gowri Amma’s poor health. The veteran leader is currently 102 years old.
KR Gowri Amma is one of the founding members of the Communist movement in the state of Kerala. She held the post of JSS General Secretary since formation of the party in 1994.
The party was formed when Gowri Amma was expelled from the CPI (M). Now the JSS is associated with the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala led by the CPI(M).
The 102-year-old was key to introducing the revolutionary Land Reforms Bill in 1957, when she held the post of revenue minister in the EMS Namboodiripad government.
The Land Reform Ordinance was later made into an Act. It set the ceiling on the amount of land a family could own, paving the way for the landless farmers to claim excess land, which in turn sowed the seeds of destruction of the feudal system.
Gowri Amma also helped draft and present the Women’s Commission Bill of 1987 apart from presenting the anti-corruption bill the same year.
Born to KA Ramanan and Parvathy Amma, Gowri Amma got attracted to politics at a young age, thanks to her sibling Sukumaran. Sukumaran was a political activist then.
Gowri Amma married TV Thomas (popularly known as TV) in 1957, and this was part of the history of the Communist movement, too. TV was another tall leader of the movement.
She later stood with the CPI(M) and TV with the CPI, during the historic split of the Communist party in 1964.
During the 1987 Assembly elections, Gowri Amma was touted to be the next Chief Minister, which would have made her the first female CM of Kerala. The Assembly elections were fought with the slogan “Keralanaattil KR Gowri Amma bharikkum” (KR Gowri Amma will rule Kerala). However, she was later declined the post of CM.