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VS Achuthanandan, Kerala’s grand old Communist leader and former Chief Minister, passed away in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, July 21. The 101-year-old veteran politician had been under treatment at SUT Hospital’s intensive care unit since June 23, after suffering a cardiac arrest. Achuthanandan was the last surviving member of the original group that split from the Communist Party of India (CPI) to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
A formidable force in Kerala’s political history, Achuthanandan remained active in politics until 2018, when a stroke weakened his health. A member of the Communist Party since before he turned 18, positions of power came late for him. He was 44 when he was first elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), and 82 when he became Chief Minister in 2006. Thrice he sat as the Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly. For 20 years from 2001, he was continuously elected as the legislator of Mararikulam.
Born in Punnapra in Alappuzha, Achuthanandan was drawn to the worker’s movement as a child, listening to the conversations of coir workers and Communist leader and freedom fighter VK Karunakaran. He was 23, in 1946, when he took part in the Punnapra-Vayalar workers’ uprising against the Travancore Dewan’s rule. During one of the police crackdowns, he was so badly injured that he was presumed dead and nearly thrown off a cliff. But he survived — and was arrested again during the Communist ban following Independence.
In 1964, Achuthanandan became one of the 32 leaders who walked out of the CPI to form the CPI(M). Three years later, he would win his first Assembly election from Ambalappuzha and get married to fellow comrade, K Vasumathi. He had by then risen within the party ranks, from state committee member to district secretary of Alappuzha.
During his tenure as an Opposition legislator, Achuthanandan had been a strong voice against forest encroachments and illegal lottery mafia. He stood against the police firing on Adivasi people in Muthanga and the operations of the Coca-Cola plant in Plachimada. When he became the Chief Minister, several notable developments took place, including the Vallarpadam transhipment terminal in Kochi, the Technopark in Kollam, and proposals for the Kannur airport and the Kochi Metro.
He was also known for his outspokenness, a trait that often landed him in controversies, both within and outside the party. His decades-long feud with Congress leader Oommen Chandy had become a fixture in Kerala’s political theatre, as both rose within their respective parties and took up the posts of Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition in turns. Within the CPI(M), his strife with his younger comrade Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala’s incumbent Chief Minister, led to unacknowledged factionalism. The rift reached its peak when Pinarayi Vijayan was accused of corruption in the SNC-Lavalin case.
Achuthanandan came to be seen as a rebel within the CPI(M), refusing to uncritically toe the party line. His visit to the house of KK Rema — the widow of TP Chandrasekharan, a politician who had left the CPI(M) to form another party before being brutally murdered by alleged CPI(M) members — cemented this image, while further endearing him to the masses.
Achuthanandan's unconventional ways, unpredictable actions, and his famous singsong speeches sparkling with sarcasm made him so much a crowdpuller that the party had to call him back for both the 2011 and 2016 elections after initially deciding not to give him a seat. After the 2016 elections, when Pinarayi Vijayan became Chief Minister, Achuthanandan was given a nominal post of Chairman of the Administrative Reforms Commission. He remained active in that role for two more years, before his health weakened.
With his demise, Kerala has lost one of its tallest political figures, a leader who straddled generations of Communist politics, from the days of underground activism to electoral power.
