There wasn't an assembly election in Kerala since Independence in which K R Gouri Amma was not a candidate. The veteran was left heartbroken after the seat division in the Left Democratic Front (LDF) ahead of the 2016 polls, meant she was not offered one to contest.
Gouri Amma told B Gopan, state secretary of her Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi (JSS), that she had never been dejected like this, even when she was shown the door from the CPM. Her party colleagues said that the CPM-led front could have let the party contest just one seat, even one without a remote chance of winning.
The former CPM leader had gone to the AKG Centre in Thiruvananthapuram twice to meet the state leaders of the party. CPM leaders Pinarayi Vijayan, who went on to become the chief minister, and Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, the current party secretary, visited Gouri Amma several times. All the leaders had assured her that they would consider her claim when the assembly elections approached. She took their words at face value and campaigned for the alliance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the assembly by-election at Aruvikkara next year.
Surprise entry
The first thing Gouri Amma recalls about her first election, back in 1948, is one of shock and reluctance. When comrade P Krishna Pillai asked her to file nominations from Cherthala, she burst out crying. She did not want to end her budding career as an advocate. She did not want to disappoint her father who dreamed of her becoming an advocate and a judge.
Krishna Pillai convinced her to stand in as a back-up candidate for Kumara Panikker aka 'Vayalar Stalin' who had been evading police arrest. Panikker could not get the case against him dropped in time, projecting Gouri Amma to the poll scene. The rest is history.
Though she lost her first election, she was one of the four communist candidates to salvage their deposit money. She said that she was more popular in Cherthala than the winner, Krishnan Ayyappan of the State Congress.
She won the next election to the Thiru-Kochi assembly in 1952. She held fort in 1954 as well. When Kerala went to its first poll after the formation of the state, Gouri Amma was a definite choice for the Communist Party of India. She was already a veteran of three elections.
After the election, she joined the first cabinet of Kerala as revenue minister. She became Kerala's first woman minister. She had been a member of the legislative assembly for most of her career, except in 1977, 2006 and 2011 when she lost. She represented Cherthala twice in the assembly and Aroor eight times.
After her exit from the CPM, she formed her own party and allied with the Congress-led Democratic Front. With her party's disastrous electoral performance and splits, she warmed up to her parent party after JSS quit the UDF in 2014.
