VS was the only surviving leader among the 32 who had quit the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1964 to form the CPI(M).
Published Jul 21, 2025 | 4:18 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 21, 2025 | 4:25 PM
V S Achuthanandan. (File photo/Supplied)
Synopsis: His style of speech, tonal variations, and stressing certain syllables to drive in a point made him dearer to people who crowded his public events. His daring attitude often pitted him against the CPI(M)’s interests.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has lost the last of its founding leaders with the demise of VS Achuthanandan.
Velikkakathu Shankaran Achuthanandan — VS, as the leader is fondly known — breathed his last at 3.20 pm at the SUT Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, 21 July. He was 101.
A former chief minister of Kerala, VS was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital on Monday after he suffered a heart attack and complained of difficulty in breathing. He had been bedridden since suffering a stroke in 2019.
VS was admitted to the hospital after suffering a heart attack on 23 June, and had since been on ventilator support.
The medical board convened a meeting on Monday afternoon after the leader’s blood pressure dipped. Later, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI(M) state secretary MV Govindan, Health Minister Veena George, chief secretary, and party leaders reached the hospital.
VS was the only surviving leader among the 32 who had quit the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1964 to form the CPI(M). A three-time Opposition leader in the state Assembly, VS had served the CPI(M) as its state secretary. He was a member of the Assembly till 2021.
He was elected as the chief minister on 18 May 2006, a post he held till 14 May 2011. At 82, he was the oldest person to become the chief minister of Kerala. He was also the longest-serving Opposition leader.
VS’s appeal as a mass leader was nonpareil. During the run-up to the 2016 Assembly election, the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) picked him as the star campaigner. VS, then 93, delivered, and Pinarayi Vijayan became the chief minister for the first time. The Vijayan Cabinet made him the Chairman of the State Administrative Reforms Commission, largely an honorary post, which he held till 2021.
The life of VS is awe-inspiring. Born on 20 October 1923 to Sankaran and Accamma at Punnapra in Alappuzha (then part of the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore), VS lost his mother at the tender age of four. His father, Sankaran, passed away when he was 11, forcing VS to quit school when he was in the seventh standard.
After dropping out of school, he helped his elder brother at his tailoring shop, before taking up the job of meshing coir at a coir factory.
VS debuted in politics through trade union activities. He joined the state Congress in 1938, and became a CPI member in 1940, marking his long, eventful life in politics. During the turbulent period in Indian, and particularly Kerala’s political landscape, VS was jailed for five years and six months. He had also spent four-and-a-half years in hiding. He became a state secretariat member of the CPI in 1957 — the same year in which India had its first elected Communist government in Kerala under EMS Namboodiripad.
During the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising in October 1946, VS was tasked with organising people underground. The uprising, often referred to as Kerala’s October Revolution, was against Travancore Diwan Sir CP Ramaswamy Aiyer’s bid for self-rule and to follow the American model of governance. He was arrested in Poonjar and tortured at the Pala police station.
In 1964, he was among the 32 members who walked out of the CPI national council to form the CPI(M).
The staunch communist was at the forefront of land struggles, demanding the implementation of the Land Reforms Act passed by the Namboodiripad government in 1967. VS’s uncompromising stand often pitted him against a section of the CPI(M), known as the official faction.
VS served as the CPI(M)’s state secretary between 1980 and 1992. He was removed from the party’s politburo as part of a disciplinary action in 2009. He had then taken a stand against the present Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, in the Lavalin bribery case.
In 1996-97, VS led the Kerala State Karshaka Thozhilali Union in an anti-reclamation stir in Alappuzha, which later came to be known as the ‘vettinirathal samaram’ (chop-down crops strike). The destruction of crops like plantain and coconuts on reclaimed paddy fields was widely criticised in the state. In 2008, the government under him enacted the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act.
He had represented Ambalapuzha in the state Assembly twice and Mararikulam once. He was the MLA of Malampuzha four times since 2001.
As the 11th chief minister, VS’s cabinet set the ball rolling for the International Container Transshipment Terminal at Vallarpadam in Kochi. His drive against encroachers on government land in Munnar, Idukki, was widely applauded, but won him enemies even within his party.
Until he withdrew from active politics following ill-health, he was the most powerful voice in the CPI(M), often to the chagrin of his comrades, as he strictly adhered to the communist ideology and had uncompromising stands on issues of governance, inclusive growth, and the environment.
Though he has been silent for the past four years, VS remains Kerala’s most eminent social presence. Even his silence becomes vocal whenever his party and the present state government draw public ire for deviating from Left politics and allegedly adopting crony capitalism.
For the Kerala society, VS is the last sentinel of the state’s working class and a doughty fighter who safeguarded the larger common interests throughout his life.
His intervention in the Edamalayar case resulted in the conviction of the former minister K Balakrishna Pillai.
His style of speech, tonal variations, and stressing certain syllables to drive in a point made him dearer to people who crowded his public events. His daring attitude often pitted him against the CPI(M)’s interests, such as his meeting with KK Rema, wife of the slain Revolutionary Marxist Party leader TP Chandrasekharan, in 2012.
VK Sasidharan, his former additional private secretary who faced the axe from the party along with two other associates in 2013, recalled how VS immediately got to the core of the politics of free software use after a perfunctory briefing in 2001. As chief minister, VS spurred the state’s growth in information technology.
VS’s uncompromising stands made former CPI(M) national general secretary Sitaram Yechuri to describe him as the party’s Fidel Castro.
“Achuthanandan’s final public appearance occurred on 18 October 2019, during a campaign rally for CPI(M), the candidate running for state Assembly from Vattiyoorkavu. That was two days before his 96th birthday, and he talked for three-quarters of an hour. Within six days, he suffered a neurological stroke that forced him to withdraw from public life,” according to Joseph C Mathew, a close confidant and chief minister Achuthanandan’s adviser on information technology.
Observers assert that VS’s enduring popularity is primarily due to his directness and simplicity. He has also always been eager to admit a mistake when any of his positions was proved incorrect.
VS has carved himself a niche space among Indian communist luminaries like BT Ranadive, AK Gopalan, and EMS.
About 23 years ago, his wife, Vasumathi, a Kerala Health Department nurse, retired. Currently serving as the deputy director of a government education company in Thiruvananthapuram, Son Arun Kumar holds an MCA. Asha, his daughter, is employed as a scientist at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Biotechnology.
