When the Congress High Command wanted the state unit of the Congress to make a daring move in Nemom, BJP's lone sitting seat, it was K Muraleedharan alone who had put his hands up.
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala refused to move away from Haripad. Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, citing the emotional outpouring in Puthupally against his move to Nemom, decided to stay put in his constituency of over half a century. Shashi Tharoor, the hugely popular Thiruvananthapuram MP, was not taken seriously by the top brass of the Congress in Kerala. Tharoor, too, didn't seem keen.
All this while Muraleedharan looked amused. His public comments seemed to suggest that he was at a loss to understand why there was so much delay in finding a candidate for Nemom. "If the High Command asks, I will contest from Nemom. There is no need to delay the candidate announcement in the name of finding a candidate for Nemom," Muraleedharan said.
He also took a dig at other top Congress leaders who were playing hard to get. "I will willingly take up any responsibility placed on me by the party. And for this, I don't ask for anything in return. Neither K Karunakaran nor his son had ever asked for any prizes in return for a candidacy," he said, referring to unconfirmed rumours of other top leaders seeking other favours to take up the Nemom candidacy.
Muraleedharan also made it seem like winning Nemom was no big deal. "Congress need not worry about Nemom. It lies adjacent to Vattiyoorkavu (which he had won twice). We had lost there only because we had handed over the seat to a very weak ally," he said.
With this decision to contest from Nemom, Muraleedharan has clawed his way back to the top of the Congress hierarchy in Kerala. He would soon be considered the third most important leader of the party after Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala. And if the UDF wins, if not the chief minister, Muraleedharan would have to be made the home minister.
Since his return to the Congress fold in 2011, after the failed Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran) experiment with the LDF, Muraleedharan seemed to relish tough challenges. In 2011, when he was given Vattiyoorkavu, not only were his links to the constituency weak but his stock was also at its lowest point. It was right after he had returned to the UDF a defeated man. Still, he won big. In 2016, though BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan gave him a mighty scare, Murali won by nearly 8000 votes.
Three years later, when the party wanted someone to take on CPM stalwart P Jayarajan in Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency, the party's eyes fell on Murali, then Vattiyoorkavu's sitting MLA. He did not flinch. Political commentators say his bold decision to fight Jayarajan in Vadakara, along with Rahul Gandhi's in Wayanad, had tipped the scales overwhelmingly in favour of the Congress during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
It was the fourth time he had become an MP. Earlier he won from Kozhikode parliamentary constituency in 1989, 91 and 99.
Now, at this moment of crisis when Congress is ridiculed as the BJP's 'B' team and was in desperate need to bolster its secular image, Muraleedharan alone was left to take up the fight on behalf of his party.
Muraleedharan who entered public life as Kozhikode district chairman of Seva Dal, won his first parliamentary elections from Kozhikode in 1989. His instant elevation was attributed to his omnipotent father, K Karunakaran. His growth provoked so much resentment that even staunch Karunakaran loyalists like Ramesh Chennithala, G Karthikeyan and M I Shanavas deserted the leader and formed a new pressure group called 'Thiruthalvadikal' or 'Reformists'.
However, soon enough political Kerala saw Muraleedharan discarding his protective parental shell and emerging as a top leader of the party. It was this popularity and acceptability, which he had acquired over 30 years of relentless political work, that made his victory easy in Vadakara.
Muraleedharan contested for the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1989. Despite the stiff opposition to his candidature from within the party, Muraleedharan emerged victorious. Subsequently he was elected to Lok Sabha from Kozhikode in 1991. He lost in Kozhikode in 1996 and Thrissur in 1998. In 1992 he became the KPCC general secretary and in 1999 the only PCC vice president. He became the KPCC president during the 2001-04 period when the UDF was in power.
In 2004 Muraleedharan became power minister in A K Antony ministry. But he had to resign from Cabinet after losing Wadakkanchery bypoll.
He was suspended from Congress in March 2005. Subsequently he became state president when the DIC(K) was formed following the vertical split in Congress. In 2006 he contested as DIC candidate from Koduvally and lost. In the same year when DIC merged with NCP he became its state president.
When NCP was thrown out of the LDF in 2009, Muraleedharan contested as an independent candidate from Wayanad Lok Sabha seats and came third.
After leaving NCP in 2009 July, Muraleedharan returned to Congress in 2011. In 2011, 2016 assembly elections he contested from Vattiyoorkavu constituency in Thiruvananthapuram district and won. At the moment he is the KPCC campaign committee chairman.
