Published Aug 30, 2026 | 11:19 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 30, 2026 | 11:19 AM
Vellappally Natesan (L) with Pinarayi Vijayan.
There was a time when senior CPI(M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan had a rather simple political assessment of Vellappally Natesan: Kerala’s version of Pravin Togadia.
The SNDP Yogam general secretary, Pinarayi had said, possessed a tongue that “spits venom against minorities”.
Vellappally’s communal rhetoric was not something the CPI(M) treated as a minor disagreement over punctuation.
Then came 2016.
Politics, as they say, can perform miracles.
Over the next decade of LDF rule, under Pinarayi Vijayan, Vellappally travelled a remarkable political distance.
The man once treated as a communal danger became a valued interlocutor. He headed the Renaissance Protection Samiti. He publicly backed Pinarayi at crucial moments. And, in September 2025, came the image that perhaps best captured this extraordinary thaw: Vellappally travelling in the Chief Minister’s official car with Pinarayi.
The Chief Minister later explained that there was nothing political about it — just two men of roughly the same age meeting unexpectedly.
Keralam politics, however, has rarely believed that the Chief Minister’s car is merely a public transport service for old acquaintances.
For years, the CPI(M) appeared to have developed a workable arrangement.
Pinarayi Vijayan and Vellapally Natesan
Vellappally’s good statements were welcomed; the bad ones were rejected. The difficulty, of course, was deciding where one Vellappally ended and the other began.
The political calculation was hardly mysterious.
The Ezhava community remains a crucial social base for the Left, while the BJP’s growing interest in sections of that electorate made Vellappally too important to ignore — however uncomfortable his rhetoric became.
After the LDF’s disastrous 2024 Lok Sabha performance, the effort to keep that bridge intact appeared even more important.
But electoral setbacks have a strange way of making old friendships suddenly look ideologically embarrassing.
The CPI raised the alarm after the 2025 local body setbacks, particularly over minority alienation.
CPI state secretary Binoy Viswam famously declared that the LDF should not become Vellappally — adding that while he might shake hands with him, he certainly would not invite him into his car.
Pinarayi’s response was equally memorable: “Pinarayi Vijayan is not Binoy Viswam.”
Quite so. One man’s political red line, apparently, was another man’s carpool.
Yet, for all the political warmth of the Pinarayi-Vellappally bromance — nothing altered the inevitable: the UDF swept to victory in the 2026 Assembly elections.
Once the results were out, party insiders who had long waited to question this unusual acquaintance found their voice.
The leadership, particularly Vijayan, came under fire for throwing the party’s political weight behind Vellappally despite repeated controversies.
The CPI, never one to mince words, argued that the LDF’s indulgence had sent the wrong signal — not just to minority voters, but to the Front’s own cadre.
In the end, the bromance had delivered plenty of optics, but apparently not enough votes.
The latest episode suggests that the friendship may finally be running out of road.
Vellappally’s attack on former Speaker AN Shamseer — that he possessed the “mindset of the Muslim League” rather than that of a communist — triggered an unusually sharp response from the CPI(M).
The party secretariat said such remarks supplied fodder for communalism.
MV Govindan rejected Vellappally’s authority to issue ideological certificates to Shamseer.
And Pinarayi, now Leader of the Opposition, called the remarks utterly absurd and rejected them with contempt.
That last part matters.
For years, Pinarayi had often chosen not to personally respond to Vellappally’s more controversial interventions. Now, suddenly, there was a full rebuttal.
Shamseer himself chose a more poetic weapon: a Facebook post featuring Sree Narayana Guru, suggesting that Gurudevan was writhing in the embrace of those carrying new purse-strings.
And so the old Vellappally has returned to the CPI(M)’s vocabulary — not quite “Kerala’s Togadia” again, perhaps, but certainly no longer the harmless acquaintance who happened to need a lift.
From “tongue that spits venom” to Renaissance Committee chairman, from ideological adversary to CM’s car companion, and now back to being accused of feeding communalism — the Pinarayi-Vellappally relationship has come almost full circle.
The only unanswered question is whether this is the final breakup.
Or merely another political separation until the next election makes old friendships useful again.
