Kerala   

A man of sharp political acumen

KOLLAM: The political career of Baby John began at Perinad in 1951. Mr. John’s sharp political acumen earned him the name ‘Kerala Kissinger.’ At one point of time he was an inevitable factor in Kerala politics. In fact, almost all political parties in the State needed his political services.

All that began with campus politics. As an intermediate student in Palayamcotta St. Xavier’s College, he took the lead in organising the Quit India movement and soon found himself dismissed from the college. He then moved to Sacred Hearts College, Thevara. He led an agitation against Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, the then Travancore Dewan, when he arrived there to inaugurate an Anglo-Indian primary school started by Stanley P. Louis. The agitation was in protest against Sir CP’s decision to nationalise primary education in Travancore.

He was arrested several times and in 1951 he made his electoral debut by contesting to the Travancore-Cochin Legislative Assembly from the Perinad constituency in the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) ticket while imprisoned in Thiruvananthapuram Central Jail. He won the election by a margin of 3,884 votes. In 1954 he contested successfully from Chavara.

In the election to the first Kerala Assembly in 1957 he lost from Karunagapally. But in 1960 he was successful from Karunagapally. He did not contest in 1965. In 1967 and 1970 he again contested successfully from Karunagapally and from 1977 till 1996 he was always successful from Chavara.

Baby John had to face setbacks too, and that was when the ‘Sarasan case’ haunted him in the early Eighties. But later on he was able to prove that the case had no base.

He proved his administrative skills as Minister in various Cabinets. He was Minister in the Cabinets of C. Achutha Menon, K. Karunakaran, A.K. Antony, P.K. Vasudevan Nair and E.K. Nayanar. As Minister he ably handled the portfolios of Revenue, Education, Irrigation, Excise, Labour and Cooperation.

In the interim, he was general secretary of the RSP. It was while serving as Irrigation Minister in E.K. Nayanar’s Cabinet that he suffered a massive cardiac disease in August 1997. That kept him admitted in Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital for a couple of months and later in a Chennai hospital. But he did not recover. One of the biggest political implications of his ailment was the split in the RSP.

At one stage, Mr. John was excommunicated by the Catholic Church for defying a directive. The excommunication order was later revoked.

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