Balakrishna Pillai and son aim to repeat winning feat

Kollam: Former Kerala chief minister K. Karunakaran and his son and president of the Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran), K. Muraleedharan may well be the best-known father-son political duo in Kerala, but the state is presently concerned about another father-son pair that is under some stress to maintain the political status quo.

Kerala Congress (B) chief R. Balakrishna Pillai, many-time minister in the state and identified strongly with the Kottarakara constituency, and his son K.B. Ganesh Kumar are in the fray once again, hoping to repeat their winning performance of 2001.

Those were the heady days for Pillai and Ganesh Kumar when both were elected from Kottarakara and Pathanapuram respectively and both went on to become ministers in the A.K. Antony cabinet, one after the other.

First it was Ganesh Kumar's turn to be transport minister in the Antony government when his father was embroiled in a legal tangle and once he was absolved of that, Pillai himself took over the transport ministry.

Since then, however, it has been bitter times for them, as well as for the Kerala Congress (B). When Oommen Chandy took over the mantle from Antony, Pillai did not find a place in the cabinet and since then he has been left in a political wilderness of sorts.

The fall has been so stark that Pillai is even talking about the irrelevance of the Kerala Congress itself and about the likelihood of merging his party with the Congress after the assembly poll.

But at the moment, what Pillai and his film star-turned politician son Ganesh Kumar have to face is an electoral battle each in his respective constituency.

Pillai had annexed both Kottarakara and Pathanapuram for himself and his son even before the United Democratic Front had given its final word on seat allocations, but such confidence is not visible in terms of political upper hand in the constituencies.

For a change, Pillai faces a strong candidate in Kottarakara in the form of advocate Aysha Potty of the Communist Party of India Marxist, a former village council president and considered an able leader.

Another advantage seen for the CPM candidate is that Kottarakara is one constituency where the party does not face any opposition from any of the coalition members of the Left Democratic Front.

Ganesh Kumar, on the other hand, is banking on the developmental works he had done in his constituency to repeat his victory. However, unlike in 2001 when the UDF was riding an anti-LDF wave in the state, Ganesh Kumar will have to win on his own merit this time. He is pitted against K.R. Chandramohan of the Communist Party of India.

If both do manage to beat back their LDF opponents, it could well signal the emergence of another long-playing father-son political story in Kerala.