Veteran Marxist VS Achuthanandan, whom CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury the other day described as Kerala’s Fidel Castro who would guide and inspire the party, on Saturday departed from the position of Kerala Assembly’s Opposition leader upon completion of his tenure, promising to remain a sentinel for the people in future also.
“I hereby assure the people that I will remain a sentinel for them in the coming days also in issues concerning them by upholding left ideals,” he said in a statement issued on Saturday as part of his departure from the position a day after his party, the CPI(M), decided to deny him the post of the new government to be formed by the lDF, disappointing his supporters State-wide.
The party had on Friday decided to make his bête noire Pinarayi Vijayan, a Politburo member, the Chief Minister of the lDF Government which will be sworn in on Wednesday. The lDF had won a landslide victory in the Assembly election held on May 16 by bagging 91 of the total 160-seats and reducing the Congress-led ruling UDF to just 47 seats.
“I hope you know that I am not crazy about positions,” the 92-year-old Marxist told newsmen in Thiruvananthapuram in response to queries on whether he would accept any position the party might give him after denying him the post of Chief Minister. “Such things are no more a subject of discussion,” Achuthanandan said closing the debate in that regard.
Reminding the yet-to-be sworn-in left regime about its duties, the outgoing Opposition leader said that it was its responsibility to expose the scams perpetrated during the rule of the UDF and to bring those responsible for them to book. “The people wish to see truthful and transparent probes in all these issues,” Achuthanandan, a former chief minister, said.
To a question on how he could be a sentinel for the people in a situation where he would have no particular positions, he said, “Wait and see.” Achuthanandan, who had led the left’s election campaign, is a member in the new Assembly. He won the Malampuzha seat in Palakkad district, which he had represented three times earlier, by a margin of over 27,000 votes.
Meanwhile, in a surprising development, the left’s Chief Minister-designate Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday called on Achuthanandan “to seek his advice in matters related to State administration”. CPI(M)-watchers in Kerala hardly remember an occasion when Vijayan had called on the veteran in over a decade. The meeting lasted eight minutes.
“VS is a man with a lot of experience. He was chief minister. I met him to know some things from him. In a sense, I am a starter,” said Vijayan, who has stayed away from the parliamentary field since 1998. State CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan was with him when he met Achuthanandan at Cantonment House, the Opposition leader’s official residence.
Within minutes of this meeting, it became almost obvious that Pinarayi, never known as a charismatic leader, was practicing a bit of diplomacy before getting into the office of the Chief Minister. He also called on outgoing Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy at his residence on Saturday morning. “We shared friendship and talked what had to be talked,” Pinarayi said.
Former Union minister O Rajagopal, the BJP’s first member in the Kerala Assembly, congratulated Pinarayi by calling on him at the AKG Centre, the CPI(M) State headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday evening. The issue of conflicts between activists of CPI(M) and RSS-BJP came up in their discussions.