M I Shanavas is remembered for his bold attempts to challenge some stands of Congress leader and former chief minister K. Karunakaran when the Leader, as the latter was known, was considered infallible.
Shanavas belonged to a trio of young leaders – G Karthikeyan and Ramesh Chennithala being the other two – who came to be known as 'thiruthalvadis' or correctionists because they dared to correct their leader. The ginger group left its own mark in the history of the Congress party in Kerala, even while staying on with Karunakaran in the 'I' group but raising objections as his supporters moved to name a successor when the leader fell ill and was under care in a hospital.
The group raised the charge that the proposal for a successor wrecked the internal peace in the Congress. At the same time, they refrained from naming the 'successor' and were able to create the impression that they were only trying to correct the government and the party.
Of course, it was interpreted as a move on their part to join Karunakaran's rivals, but they could manage to uphold their arguments and escape getting dumped.
Victory after health scare
Shanavas faced crisis after crisis, but he never gave up and kept on winning. He won the Lok Sabha election in 2009 even after he was hospitalised and was reportedly in a serious condition.
Shanavas used to be the Congress voice on television debates, but disappeared all of a sudden one day in 2010. It was known that he was seriously ill. He had entered a private hospital during the Ramadan in 2010 after it was noticed that he was losing weight unusually.
Medical tests showed that there was an obstruction in the bile duct. Besides, a growth was seen in the external wall of his pancreas. A surgical procedure was set for that, but then a complication was detected in his liver. Further pathological tests showed that he was having liver cancer.
However, as chemotherapy and other measures were planned, further diagnosis offered a relief – that it is not really cancer. He then underwent treatment at a hospital in Mumbai.
Back from his hospital bed, Shanavas went on to fight a hard battle against CPM's star legislator Sathyan Mokeri in Wayanad. Beating Sathyan with a margin of over 20,000 votes, Shanavas entered the Lok Sabha a second time.
Record win
Shanavas had won Wayanad in 2009 with the largest margin in a Lok Sabha election in Kerala. He beat M Rahmathullah of CPM by a margin of 1,53,439 votes, and shattered the record held by S. Sivaraman when he won Ottapalam with a 1,32,652 majority in 1993. Shanavas won 4,10,703 votes against Rahmathullah's 2,57,264.
The record win wiped out the five defeats Shanavas had suffered earlier. He lost the election to the state assembly from Vadakekkara in 1987 and 1991, and from Pattambi in 1996. In 1999 and 2004 he contested to the Lok Sabha from Chirayinkeezhu and lost.
The party then handed him a solid seat in Wayanad in 2009, after he held responsibilities as the KPCC vice-president, joint secretary, and general secretary.
He surpassed the party's expectation of a one lakh-vote majority in Wayanad, and went on to set the record despite the presence of K. Karunakaran's son K. Muraleedharan, whom the Nationalist Congress Party had fielded.