For new Kerala CM VD Satheesan, political rewards did not come easy

Vadassery Damodaran Satheesan was inducted into Congress party through its student wing in the early 1980s.

Vadassery Damodaran Satheesan, better known as VD Satheesan, was inducted into the Congress party through its student wing, the Kerala Students Union (KSU), in the early 1980s.

In the run-up to the election campaign, Satheesan was perceived by many to be the ‘natural choice’ for the chief minister’s post if the UDF won. (PTI)

Soon, Satheesan’s oratory skills were on display on the campus. Next, his leadership skills came to the fore during his tenure as a three-time union councillor at MG University in Kottayam. Despite his popularity, the young leader was overlooked for key posts in the KSU and the Youth Congress.

A decade later, in 1996, Satheesan finally got the nod from the Congress leadership to contest the Paravur assembly seat, a Communist stronghold not far from his birthplace, Nettoor, in Ernakulam district.

Though Satheesan lost the election in the Left Democratic Front (LDF) wave, which swept the state -- the margin was a thin 1116 votes – it was the beginning of a long political innings for him. For the next five years, he set up camp in Paravur and determinedly focused on repairing organisational weaknesses. The hard work paid off five years later, in 2001, when he won from the same constituency, defeating the sitting Left MLA by over 7000 votes.

In 2011, when the United Democratic Front (UDF) under Congress leader Oommen Chandy came to power with a razor-thin majority, Satheesan, by then a three-time MLA and a polished speaker in the Assembly, was widely tipped to get a cabinet berth. But that was not to be.

“When we were in the opposition (from 2006-11), I sat in the second row, right behind Chandy. I was like a soldier on thewar front. But when the UDF came to power, I was told to sit on the last row. Maybe someone decided that I can only sit on the last row. I was initially sad, but I brushed it aside. I decided that even if I have to sit in the last row, I will speak my mind,” Satheesan had said in a 2013 interview.

But nearly a decade and a half later, on Thursday, when the Congress leadership named Satheesan its chief minister in Kerala after he led the UDF coalition to a resounding win with 102 out of 140 seats, the 61–year-old six-time MLA will perhaps finally believe that his loyalty to the party and his brand of politics have finally borne fruit.

The natural choice

In the run-up to the election campaign, Satheesan was perceived by many to be the ‘natural choice’ for the chief minister’s post if the UDF won. After all, in 2021, when he was named the leader of the opposition, the CPI(M)-led LDF had returned to power with 99 out of 140 seats, with the morale of the Congress rank-and-file plummeting.

The Congress stood waist-deep in political quicksand – on one side, the LDF had made inroads into its traditional Christian and Muslim vote banks and on the other, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was gaining influence among its core Hindu Nair base. Satheesan and his team had to work hard and fast.

He set out to mend fences with existing allies and to bring new parties and social groups into the UDF fold. In an interview with HT in March this year, Satheesan spoke of how he wanted the UDF to become more than a confederation of parties.

“I wanted it to be a broader political platform with influencers, opinion-makers and even fellow travellers of the Left. While the current LDF is on the extreme right of the political spectrum, we are the Nehruvian Left. Those who backed the LDF from an ideological standpoint are no longer with them; they are with us,” he said.

Along with targeting the LDF government on ideological and policy-related issues, Satheesan focused on fixing the cracks in the Congress armour, particularly at the grassroots level, to turn the party into an election-winning machine. He re-established ties with Christian and Muslim community leaders, quietly aware that the party’s chances of victory in 2026 rested firmly on the support of the minorities.

The efforts paid off. Out of five bypolls between 2021 and 2026, the UDF won four, including wresting a sitting LDF seat. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the UDF won 18 of the state’s 20 parliamentary seats, losing just one from its 2019 tally. It was followed by the UDF sweeping a majority of the three-tier rural and urban local bodies in Kerala in December last year – it’s best result in panchayat polls since 2010.

And so, after the Assembly polls, when the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) leadership began its consultations on who should become the next CM – a process that ultimately stretched over 10 days – many in Kerala wondered why the party was taking so long. Hundreds of party workers and activists came out on the roads with banners that read ‘Pada nayichavan nayikatte’ (Let the one who led the battle govern’).

Two other names made the rounds: KC Venugopal and Ramesh Chennithala. At one juncture, it looked like Venugopal, who was backed by many MLAs, would become the CM. Eventually, the Congress chose ‘jana vikaram’ (public sentiment) for Satheesan over legislative support.