Senior CPM leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan passed away. 68 years old. C.P.M. He is a member of the Politburo and former Secretary of State. He was suffering from cancer and was undergoing treatment in Chennai. He died at eight o’clock at night. His wife and children were with him. Funeral on Monday at 3 pm in Thalassery. The body will be brought to Thalassery tomorrow in an air ambulance. It will be put up for public viewing at Thalassery Town Hall from noon. He became a five-time member of the Legislative Assembly from Thalassery. With the Minister of Home Affairs and Tourism. VS was second in the cabinet.
Kodiyeri Balakrishnan was the laughing face of CPM for a decade. A gentle and stern party secretary who worked hand in hand with Pinarayi Vijayan to end sectarianism and make the party monolithic. Kodiyeri was the pillar of party-government coordination that led to the historic achievement of continuous governance. The only thing that made him incomplete as a leader was that he did not reach the post of Chief Minister.
Who was Kodiyeri is a simple question. If you ask what Kodiyeri was, you will be confused. Gentle, yet stern. No ideological weight, but ideological clarity. Pinarayi was on the side, but not at the head of anti-VS. Party was everything, family was equally important. Although he did not rise to the ranks of the greatest leaders of CPM, he became a top leader who needed time. He was generally accepted regardless of political differences. Kodiyeri’s path in the party was the middle path of persuasion and moderation. When the party and the government lost their footing, Kodiyeri introduced the extraordinary flexibility of practical politics. An example is the gold smuggling case that put the first Pinarayi government in crisis. The question is whether the Chief Minister is not aware of the activities done by Shiv Shankar in his office.
Kodiyeri comes from a family with a Congress background. Balakrishnan was a boy born on November 16, 1953 after four daughters were born to Motammal Kunjunnikurup and Narayaniamma. Mother was everything. After his father’s death, Balakrishnan supported his mother by doing farm work and selling milk to neighboring houses. Balakrishnan became a communist due to the local conditions and school life. He became an active CPM worker in 1970. Twenty-one-year-old Kodiyeri, who was the state secretary of the SFI, who led the demonstration against emergency, was arrested. Then he was in jail for a year and a half. Vijayan from neighboring Pinarayi was a fellow prisoner at that time. Kodiyeri was appointed by the party to minister to Pinarayi Vijayan in jail. It is history that those who came together in jail then became the Chief Minister and Party Secretary at the same time and led Kerala politics. During the period of sectarianism, the two joined the party, but Kodiyeri’s was more official than Pinarayi’s.
Kodiyeri was always guided by party organization and stance. In 1982, he reached the Legislative Assembly from Thalassery. Undefeated, he became a five-time member of the Legislative Assembly from Thalassery itself. Kodiyeri became the second in the VS Cabinet in 2006 as the Minister of Home Affairs and Tourism. He was a party loyalist who had no faith in V.S. AKG resolved the crises created by the conflicting interests of the Center and the government with tact. In 2008, Kodiyeri was elevated to Politburo. Before that, the growth in the party started when he became the Kannur district secretary in 1990. Member of State Committee in 1988, Member of State Secretariat in 1995 and Member of Central Committee in 2005. Kodiyeri succeeded Pinarayi as the party secretary in the 2015 Alappuzha conference that saw the beheading of the VS party. After becoming secretary again in 2018 in Thrissur conference, Kodiyeri was weakened by illness and controversies created by his children. Even then, Kodiyeri did not object to the media reporting that he had gone on vacation.
Kodiyeri was active in the organization even when he stepped down from the post of state secretary. It was Kodiyeri himself who pulled the strings during the local and assembly elections ahead of Acting Secretary A. Vijayaraghavan. Even during the period of illness, the CPM had no other answer than Kodiyeri to the question of secretary in the Ernakulam conference. The relevance of Kodiyeri was that he emerged as an essential leader for the CPM in the changing times.
Senior CPM leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan passes away