K.K. Rema | Daughter of Onchiyam
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Some time in a moist June 9 years in the past when Kerala was keenly engrossed within the Neyyattinkara Assembly bypoll in Thiruvananthapuram, veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI-M] chief V.S. Achuthanandan made a shock go to to the home of K.K. Rema, widow of the slain Revolutionary Marxist occasion of India (RMPI) founder-leader T.P. Chandrasekharan, elevating the political ombrometer throughout the monsoons within the State.
The incident not solely despatched shock waves among the many CPI (M) management, the picture of Ms. Rema crying on the shoulders of the then Leader of the Opposition Achuthanandan nonetheless stays etched within the political reminiscence of Kerala.
The hacking of Chandrasekharan, who had walked out of the CPI(M) and floated a dissident outfit, by a seven-member gang engaged by a bit of native CPI(M) leaders at Onchiyam on May 4, 2012, continues to hang-out the occasion within the state. Even within the just-concluded Assembly ballot, the Left-led coalition filed a grievance towards Ms. Rema, a Congress-led UDF-backed candidate in Vadakara, for attempting to affect voters through the use of photos of VS, as Mr. Achuthanandan is popularly recognized, within the marketing campaign materials.
Last week, Ms. Rema appeared to be the happiest, rising victorious by a margin of 7,000 votes from the identical constituency she had misplaced within the 2016 polls. Her victory gave a significant embarrassment to the CPI(M) State-wide.
“This is the victory of T.P. Chandrasekharan. The electorate responded to his cold-blooded murder. The voters showed that the nine-year wound did not heal so easily. This is an achievement against political violence and injustice,” the 50-year-old proclaimed at Onchiyam.
Ms. Rema was born the second of the three youngsters of K.K. Madhavan and K.K. Dakshayani. Her father, a die-heard Marxist, was two-time grama panchayat president of Naduvannur in Kozhikode district. By her personal account, her political vibes started to merge when she joined the pre-university course on the Guruvayurappan College in Kozhikode. She was nominated to the district unit of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the scholars affiliate of the CPI(M).
An undergraduate on the Malabar Christian College, Ms. Rema was elected to the Senate Council of the Calicut University. Later on, she turned the State vice-president of the organisation. She was a member of the CPI (M) Naduvannur department after leaving school.
In 1993, she met her future husband, the “brave and aggressive” TP. But the wedding proposal got here through the occasion. “I knew TP, and we used to talk. It was a sort of arranged-love marriage,” she says.
A 12 months later, they tied the knot and she or he moved to Onchiyam. Though many CPI(M) leaders persuaded her to affix energetic politics, she remained a home-maker. Her household life kindled in her after the beginning of their son, Abhinand, in 1997.
Party factionalism
Meanwhile, factionalism within the CPI(M) Kerala unit had its reverberations in a much bigger means in Onchiyam. Perhaps the infighting began a lot sooner than 2006 when Mr. Achuthanandan contested the Assembly election after initially being denied a ticket after which went on to develop into the Chief Minister.
Chandrasekharan, recognized with the Achuthanandan camp, had been DYFI Kozhikode district secretary. After an area intra-party dispute in 2008, he left the CPI (M) and fashioned the RMPI. Ms. Rema recollects that the CPI(M) determined to eradicate him as its management didn’t need a parallel dissident unit to operate in Onchiyam, a area of martyrs the place 10 occasion employees have been killed in 1948, eight in police firing and two others in police custody. Political realities modified after Chandrasekharan left the occasion. The CPI(M) misplaced the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency within the 2009, 2014 and 2019 elections.
Realities additionally modified for Ms. Rema. Her endeavour towards odds introduced her to electoral politics having to face multifarious political events.
She unsuccessfully contested the Assembly ballot in 2016, securing over 20,000 votes. None will neglect when Ms. Rema sat on dharna earlier than AKG Bhavan in New Delhi in 2018.
Ms. Rema nonetheless feels that the conspiracy angle has not be probed into the homicide of her husband though a particular extra periods court docket convicted 12 accused, together with three leaders of the CPI(M) in 2014.
However, sensing earlier itself that the occasion’s electoral prospects could be broken, the CPI (M) introduced out its party-level inquiry into Chandrasekharan’s killing stating that the homicide was not politically-motivated however based mostly on a private animosity between him and the CPI(M) Kunnummakkara native committee member K.C. Ramachandran, who was convicted by the trial court docket.
Now, her dependence on the UDF appeared very apparent because the CPI(M) remains to be hostile to her and the occasion she leads. Her occasion cadres has had a troublesome time dwelling in an remoted political framework at Onchiyam. Today, Ms. Rema has a brand new job to maneuver forward on a number of fronts concurrently. She has an agenda for her constituency to achieve extra public assist. “Political culture should change in Kerala. Political leaders should learn to respect the opposition,” she says.
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