P.P. Mukundan, BJP architect of covert anti-communist political alliance in 1990s, passes away at 77
The Hindu
P.P. Mukundan, 77, widely known for his role in the '90s anti-communist electoral alliance in Kerala, passed away due to respiratory illness. He was an RSS activist in Kannur and later a powerful BJP leader in Kerala. He was instrumental in forming the "Co-Li-Bi" alliance with Congress and IUML to counter CPI(M) aggression. He was also the convenor of the BJP-led anti-CPI(M) aggression forum. He faced criticism in his own party for trading BJP votes to help his benefactor. He was remembered by BJP and CM Pinarayi Vijayan as the face of Sangh Parivar politics in Kerala.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader P.P. Mukundan, 77, widely reckoned as the architect of an arguably covert and purported anti-communist electoral alliance with the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in Kerala in the 1990s, passed away at a private hospital in Kochi on Wednesday. Doctors attributed the cause of his death to a respiratory illness.
Mr. Mukundan, a bachelor, cut his political teeth as a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist in the Kannur district in the early 1980s.
The restive period saw a spurt in tit-for-tat violence between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and RSS cadres in the viscerally politicised North Kerala region.
The brutal inter-party violence in Kannur, characterised by waylayings, ambushes, arson and high-profile murders, would frame Mr. Mukundan’s political outlook.
At the time, the BJP was an electoral nonentity in the State with no Lok Sabha, Legislative Assembly or local body representation. The party acutely felt it had no pulpit to vocalise its woes against CPI(M) “violence”.
A persistently painful feeling of being hounded prompted BJP leaders like Mr. Mukundan to find a tactical electoral ally in the Congress and IUML to hold out against CPI(M) aggression. The BJP direly needed its woes to be heard in the Assembly, at least by proxy.
It helped the BJP that K. Karunkaran, a professed anti-communist and shrewd tactician, sat at the apex of the Congress organisation in Kerala in the 1990s.
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