Pinarayi Vijayan


Pinarayi Vijayan is an Indian politician who is the current Chief Minister of Kerala, serving since 25 May 2016. A member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India, he was the longest-serving secretary of the Kerala State Committee of the CPI from 1998 to 2015. He also served in the government of Kerala as Minister of Electric Power and Co-operatives from 1996 to 1998. Vijayan won a seat in the May 2016 Kerala Legislative Assembly election as the CPI candidate for Dharmadom constituency and was selected as the leader of the Left Democratic Front and became the 12th Chief Minister of Kerala.

Early life and education

Vijayan was born on 24 May 1945 in Pinarayi village of Malabar district in Madras Presidency, as the youngest son of Koran and Kalyani. He had 14 siblings of which only three survived. After graduating school, he worked as a handloom weaver for a year before joining for Pre–university course in the Government Brennen College, Thalassery. Subsequently, he earned B.A. Economics degree from the same college.

Political career

Pinarayi Vijayan entered politics through student union activities at Government Brennen College, Thalassery. He eventually joined the Communist Party of India in 1964. Vijayan became Kannur district secretary of the Kerala Students Federation, which later became the Students Federation of India. He went on to become the state secretary and subsequently the state president of KSF. He then moved on to Kerala State Youth Federation, which later became the Democratic Youth Federation of India. He became the president of the state committee. During that period, when communists in Kerala were organising the political activities from different hide-outs, Pinarayi Vijayan was imprisoned for one and a half years.
Later he was elected as the president of the Kerala state co-operative bank. During the emergency, he was arrested and tortured by police. He became the Kannur district secretary of the CPI when M.V. Raghavan left the party over the 'alternative document' row. Within three years, he became a member of the State Secretariat. He was elected to the Assembly in 1970, 1977 and 1991 from Kuthuparamba, in 1996 from Payyanur and in 2016 from Dharmadom. He was the Minister for Electric power and Co-operatives in the E.K. Nayanar ministry from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, he became the state secretary of the CPI, following the death of the incumbent Chadayan Govindan. He was elected to the Politburo of the CPI in 2002.
On 26 May 2007 the CPI suspended Pinarayi Vijayan and V. S. Achuthanandan from the Politburo for their public remarks on each other. Pinarayi was reinstated into the Politburo later.

Chief Minister

Pinarayi Vijayan was selected by the CPI as Chief Minister of Kerala in May 2016, following the 2016 Legislative Assembly election. Vijayan was selected as the leader of Left Democratic Front government. He was sworn in on 25 May 2016 before a crowd of party workers, along with his 19-member cabinet. Vijayan also holds the charge of Home Affairs & Vigilance Departments along with the other portfolios normally held by the Chief Ministers, and not mentioned elsewhere. He is elected from Dharmadom constituency. During his reign, he introduced various schemes like Haritha Keralam Mission, Project LIFE, Ardram Mission and Comprehensive Education Reforms. For the first time in India, an all-woman police squad called Pink Patrol was introduced in Kerala to ascertain the security of women and children in public places.

Positions held

He is married to Kamala Vijayan and has two children, T Veena and Vivek Kiran. His wife is a retired teacher. Their son studied MBA at Brimmingham University and now works in HSBC bank, in Abu Dhabi and daughter Veena, after completing a ten-year long career in the information technology sector, started an IT company of her own in 2015 in Bangalore. T Veena had worked for 8 years in Oracle and then was the CEO of RP Techsoft, a company owned by Malayali NRI businessman Ravi Pillai in Thiruvananthapuram. Vijayan and his wife resides in the official residence of the Chief Minister at Trivandrum.

Controversies