Veteran CPI(M) leader and former Kerala CM VS Achuthanandan passes away at 101

Former Kerala Chief Minister and veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader V.S. Achuthanandan passed away at the age of 101 in Thiruvananthapuram on July 21, 2025. He had been admitted to a private hospital since June 23 after suffering a cardiac arrest. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal, and CPI(M) state secretary were among those who visited him during his final days.

Achuthanandan served as the Chief Minister of Kerala from 2006 to 2011. A founding member of CPI(M) following the 1964 split in the undivided Communist Party, he was elected to the Kerala Assembly seven times and contested ten elections in his political career. He had withdrawn from public life after a minor stroke in 2019 and was residing at his son V.A. Arun Kumar’s home in Thiruvananthapuram.

Born in 1923 in Punnapra, Alappuzha, into a family of agricultural workers, Achuthanandan began his political activism at the age of 16. He took part in organising agricultural labourers and workers in Kuttanad and was involved in the 1946 Punnapra-Vayalar uprising. He was arrested, tortured in police custody, and later claimed he was saved from a mass grave by a fellow prisoner who noticed he was still alive.

He rose through the ranks of the CPI(M), serving as the party’s Kerala state secretary. He was removed from the Polit Bureau in 2009 after defying the state secretariat. In 2012, as Leader of the Opposition, he visited K.K. Rema, wife of slain Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T.P. Chandrasekharan, which went against the party's directive. As a legislator and party leader, he advocated for causes such as environmental conservation, labour rights, gender equality, and free software.

Achuthanandan often reflected on his poverty-stricken early life, stating he once dried his only set of clothes on a temple pond’s steps while waiting for leftover puja rice. He briefly apprenticed as a tailor. When asked about religion during his Chief Minister tenure, he replied, “Like all of us, the tales of gods absorb me. But, like everybody else, I wonder whether they exist and, if so, which plane they inhabit.” He is survived by his wife K. Vasumathy, daughter V.V. Asha, son V.A. Arun Kumar, and grandchildren.