Chennai: Marxist stalwart V.S. Achuthanandan died Monday at the age of 101 at a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. He had served as chief minister of Kerala from 2006-2011 and last held the post of chairman of Kerala Administrative Reforms Commission from 2016-2021.
Achuthanandan retired from active politics in 2019 after suffering a mild stroke. He had since been living with his son V.A. Arun Kumar in Thiruvananthapuram where doctors restricted the number of visitors he could receive on account of age-related ailments.
Achuthanandan was rushed to the private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram in June after he suffered a cardiac arrest.
In his condolence message Monday, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan said Achuthanandan was not just a political leader but a moral force who brought environmental, human rights, and gender issues to the heart of mainstream political discourse. “With his passing, we have lost the final link to the chapter of our political evolution,” Vijayan wrote.
Achuthanandan was the MLA from Malampuzha constituency from 2001 till 2021. His last term as MLA ended in May 2021, making the end of his active legislative career spanning over two decades. In total, he served as an MLA for more than 34 years.
When he completed his tenure in the 14th Kerala Legislative Assembly at the age of 97 in May 2021, he was the eldest member ever in the history of the House.
He served as the CPI (Marxist) Kerala state secretary between 1980 and 1992 and was later inducted into the politburo in 1985.
Achuthanandan is known for his initiatives including anti-encroachment drive at Munnar, crackdown on lottery mafia in Kerala, demolition drives against illegal encroachments in Kochi and anti-piracy operations across the state during his tenure as chief minister.
Born in Punnapra, Alappuzha, to Sankaran and Accamma, Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan lost his mother when he was 4 and his father when he was 11.
Financial constraints forced him to leave school after Class 7, which is when he started working in factories, joined labour unions and later the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1940.
It was during this period that he took part in the Punnapra-Vayalar militant Communist uprising against the rule of the Maharaja of Travancore who had declared that Travancore would not join India. Achuthanandan was among those arrested for taking part in the uprising in October 1946.
After Independence, in 1952, he became Alappuzha division secretary of the unified Communist Party of India and in a span of five years, rose to the level of district secretary before being appointed state secretariat member in 1957.
In 1964, he was among the 32 prominent members who broke away from the CPI and formed Communist Party of India (Marxist).
When he was state secretary and a member of the party’s politburo, he successfully contested the 1991 Assembly elections and was projected as the chief ministerial candidate during the 1996 Assembly elections. Nevertheless, he lost the election from Mararikulam. In 2001, although he won from Malampuzha, the Left-led coalition could not form the government and he served as Leader of the Opposition.
In 2006, he once again won from the same constituency, and was elected chief minister by the Left-led coalition. Although he served as the chief minister between 2006 and 2011, CPI(M) denied him a ticket in 2011, leading to a statewide protest, forcing the party to field him from Malampuzha and he won.
It was in the 1960s that Achuthanandan first faced heat from the party after he organised a blood donation camp for Army jawans during the Chinese aggression, which went against the party’s line of action. He was demoted from the central committee to the district secretariat.
After becoming chief minister in 2006, Achuthanandan publicly criticised fellow cabinet ministers Thomas Isaac and Paloli Mohammed Kutty over the decision to accept a loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
However, the CPI(M) central leadership did little beyond issuing him a warning.
In 2007, Achuthanandan was suspended from the CPI(M) politburo along with Pinarayi Vijayan due to factionalism within the Kerala unit of CPI(M). Both were reinstated six months later. Later in 2009, Achuthanandan was removed from the CPI(M)’s politburo again, supposedly due to his vocal opposition to Vijayan.
In 2015, he walked out of the CPI(M) state conference in Alappuzha to protest criticism from party delegates over his feud with Vijayan. He was labeled as a “comrade with an anti-party mindset” in the resolution passed at the party conference.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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