Analysis | War of Jayarajans in CPM: Is M V Govindan with PJ? Unlikely

An impression has gained ground that P Jayarajan had the backing of CPM state secretary M V Govindan when he levelled serious charges of financial misconduct against LDF convener E P Jayarajan at the CPM State Committee meeting on December 24. 

If this is the case, did Govindan not anticipate the trap he would find himself in if Jayarajan was allowed to bare his mind against the LDF convener? 

Jayarajan's allegations against EP related to Vaidekam Ayurveda Healing Village, a resort in Kannur's Morazha village and in which EP's son and wife are partners.

In 2018, the Left-leaning Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad pointed out that the resort was being constructed after pulling down an ecologically crucial hillock, Uduppakunnu, along the banks of the Vellikkeel river at Morazha in Kannur. 

This was seen as quite a rebellion because Morazha was a CPM village and E P Jayarajan was considered the second most powerful CPM leader in Kerala after Pinarayi Vijayan. 

When P Jayarajan himself raised the resort issue at the district-level party meetings, it was felt that ideological divisions that had long remained dormant would soon burst forth and upset the fragile peace in the Kannur unit of the CPM. 

Since it involved the destruction of a hill, the Taliparamba tahsildar also made some cautious remarks in his report. He advised against issuing a stop memo, perhaps sensing the mood of his political bosses, but recommended an environmental impact assessment.

But no studies were done or checks of any kind were insisted upon as the area fell under the CPM-led Anthoor Municipality. M V Govindan's wife P K Shyamala was the chairperson, and it was Govindan's writ that ran in the area.

Ghost that stalks Govindan

The CPM state secretary will be haunted more by what happened a year later. 

On June 18, 2019, Sajen Parayil, a 49-year-old Nigeria-returned businessman who had invested over Rs 16 crore in a convention centre at Anthoor hung himself to death. P K Shyamala was the chairperson.

It is said that Shyamala refused to give Sajen the occupancy certificate necessary to begin operations citing minor defects. Sajen was made to visit the Municipality 20 times, and each time he was told to make more changes to his convention centre. After the 20th time, Sajen returned home and hung himself from the rafters. 

Unlike in the ayurveda resort case, which involved the destruction of an entire hill, Sajen was accused of minor infringements of Kerala Building Rules. He made those changes but not only were these rejected but new violations were pointed out.

A wedding and a suicide

P Jayarajan's name had cropped up in the aftermath of Sajen's suicide. 

The then opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, after meeting Sajen's widow Beena, had told the Assembly on June 24, 2019, that P K Shyamala was angry because Sajen had sought P Jayarajan's help. 

Mulsim League leader K M Shaji, who also visited Sajen's widow, said that Sajen was broken down to the point of wanting to commit suicide only because he had asked P Jayarajan for help. The UDF insinuation was that Govindan and E P were outraged.

Shaji said Beena had told UDF leaders that her husband was worried after he attended the marriage of P Jayarajan's daughter. "Sajen came back and told his wife that since the other group in the party had seen him at the wedding, his files will not move," Shaji said.

Fratricide in Kannur CPM

P Jayarajan, who at that point was beginning to get isolated in the party for allegedly encouraging hero worship, was pitted against two other Kannur CPM stalwarts: E P Jayarajan and M V Govindan. It was Govindan who was the sharpest critic of the leader-centric tendencies, manifested in the PJ Army, that P Jayarajan had allegedly promoted. 

Sajen's suicide was then widely believed to be the fallout of the rivalry of Kannur CPM leaders; P Jayarajan on one side and M V Govindan and E P Jayarajan on the other.

Pinarayi's strange logic

Govindan and EP had Pinarayi's backing. The Chief Minister's was the weirdest response to Sajen's suicide. He heaped all the blame on the municipal secretary, painting the bureaucrat as all-powerful and the chairperson helpless.

"If there is a complaint against the decision of the secretary, the law states that an appeal can be filed only before a tribunal. The municipal council concerned does not have the right to hear the appeal. This is an unfortunate situation," the chief minister had lamented. 

Even the Chief Minister knows a municipal council has far greater powers than its secretary. Here is what Rule 15 of Kerala Municipality Building Rules, 1999, says: "If the secretary neither approves nor disapproves a building site, neither gives nor refuses permission to execute any work within thirty days from the date of receipt of the application, on the written request of the applicant, the Municipal Council (headed by the chairperson) shall be bound to determine whether such approval or permission should be given or not."

Also, the Anthoor municipal council did not seem so powerless when they bulldozed all objections and allowed the resort to come up after demolishing a hill.

Pinarayi was merely letting his disappointment with P Jayarajan known. 

Jayarajan's opportunism

Given their history of mutual suspicion, it is highly unlikely that Govindan, too, would have approved of P Jayarajan's anti-graft outbursts against EP. 

According to sources, when Govindan spoke of deviations he was referring only to the anarchic behaviour of leaders of youth organisations like SFI and DYFI. P Jayarajan merely pounced on Govindan's rectification document for youth leaders to settle old scores with veterans.