With a deeply ingrained habit of taking principled stands and sticking to his guns, V S Achuthanandan remained a rebel throughout his political life, twice getting removed from the CPI(M) Politburo for going against the party line. Achuthanandan died here on Monday at the age of 101.
For VS, as the former Kerala Chief Minister was popularly known, the first major defiance of party line came as early as 1962 during the India-China war that divided the Indian Communists. VS was among the Communists jailed in the Thiruvananthapuram Central Prison. His plan to donate blood as well as money earned from the sale of rations from jail to Indian soldiers did not have the party’s consent and was construed as helping the government. The party found Achuthanandan’s approach anti-Communist, and he was demoted from the central committee to the district secretariat, where he spent a year.
In 1988, when the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government led by E K Nayanar explored establishing a nuclear power plant in Kasaragod, the pro-Left Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad stood against the move. VS, despite being the party’s state secretary, stood with the Parishad, inviting party censure.
Two years later, when CPI(M activists abducted two party councillors of the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation, the then party general secretary, E M S Namboodiripad, asked Achuthanandan to settle the issue. But for five days, Achuthanandan, then the state secretary, did not move. After consulting Nayanar, the CM, a judicial probe was ordered. Following this, the CPI(M)’s central leadership summoned the entire state secretariat to Delhi, where Achuthanandan was censured.
In the last two decades of his active political life, VS faced the party’s ire mainly due to intra-party feuds in which he found himself at the opposite end of the leadership. After the CPI(M) state conference in 1998, he was censured for orchestrating the removal of rivals, mainly CITU leaders, from the state committee.
For several years, one of his bitter rivals in the party was Pinarayi Vijayan, the current CM. The intense factionalism got so bad in 2007 that the CPI(M) removed VS, the CM at the time, from the Politburo in what is one of the rarest punishments in the party. The leadership also suspended Vijayan. Six months later, both were reinstated, but rebelliousness continued to be irresistible for VS, then in his eighties.
In 2009, when the SNC Lavalin corruption scandal hit the CPI(M), VS questioned the party’s stand that the case against then state secretary Vijayan was fabricated and politically motivated, and wanted his younger colleague to step down. This again put him on a collision course with the party leadership, and VS was again removed from the Politburo. A member of the party’s supreme body since 1980, the veteran leader never managed to get back to it after that.
This, however, did not stop Achuthanandan’s run-ins with the CPI(M) leadership. In 2012, the party publicly censured him for criticising it following the murder of rebel T P Chandrasekharan by a CPI(M)-backed gang. VS, the Opposition leader at the time, had alleged that the party was involved in the conspiracy behind the murder in May 2012.
In October that year, the Central Committee publicly censured VS for attempting to visit Koodankulam to express solidarity with the anti-nuclear plant agitators. The next censure came in 2013 on the eve of his 90th birthday, again for raking up the SNC Lavalin case. In a TV interview, the former CM criticised the party’s stand on the issue and for favouring Vijayan.
The last time the party cracked the whip on Achuthanandan was in 2017, two years before he retired from active life following a stroke. At the time, the Central Committee pulled him up for repeated violations of party discipline and organisational principles.
On several occasions, Achuthanandan’s rebellious nature eclipsed the party at crucial moments. When a bypoll to the Neyyattinkara Assembly seat was held on June 1, 2012, VS left the party red-faced by visiting Chandrasekharan’s wife. In February 2015, when the party’s state conference was in progress in Alappuzha, Achuthanadan walked out in protest against an attack from rival delegates and the party secretariat passing a resolution against him for an anti-party stand.