Pinarayi Vijayan to be next Kerala CM

20 May, Thiruvananthapuram

The CPI(M) leadership in Kerala has picked party Poliburo member Pinarayi Vijayan as Chief Minister.

The CPI(M) State Secretariat took the formal decision to nominate Vijayan as Chief Minister in the presence of party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and Politburo member Prakash Karat and others at the party’s State Committee meeting in Thiruvananthapuram Friday.

Briefing the media, Yechuri described the party veteran V.S. Achudanandan as Kerala’s Fiedel Castro and said Achudanandan will act as a philosopher and guide to the party.

Earlier, Yechuri and Karat had held a brief consultation with party veteran V.S. Achuthanandan and conveyed him the party central leadership’s decision to nominate Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan for chief minstership.

The 72 year-old. Vijayan was this time re-elected from Kannur’s Dharmadom with a margin of nearly 37,000 votes. He was first elected to the Assembly from Koothuparambu in 1970. In the elections held in 1977 and 1991, Vijayan was re-elected from the same constituency.

He won the 1996 elections from Payyannur with a massive majority and was made Minister in the E.K. Nayanar Ministry.

Vijayan who rose to the party leadership through the leftist students’ wing, was elected the State Secretary of the CPI(M) in 2012.