On June 13, 2022, when the IndiGo flight from Kannur landed at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport, Youth Congress leaders Farseen Majeed and RK Naveenkumar raised slogans and walked towards the exit, where Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was seated. It was a time when the Youth Congress had escalated their protests after Swapna Suresh, a key accused in a gold smuggling case, alleged that Pinarayi and his family were partners in the crime.

But before the unarmed protesters could get near the Chief Minister, CPM leader and convener of the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) EP Jayarajan intervened like a pub bouncer, knocking down the two with a single push. Jayarajan, who was 72 at the time, falsely claimed that the two protesters were drunk and said he could not stand by as a mute spectator while the Chief Minister was being attacked. (Kerala Police went a step further and recorded the protest as an attempt to murder.)

Though the antics earned Jayarajan a three-week ban from flying, he expected the CM to appreciate his life-saving act and look upon him favourably again. He hoped to become Pinarayi's confidant once again as he harboured ambitions to succeed the ailing Kodiyeri Balakrishnan as the Secretary of the CPM in Kerala. Jayarajan, the most senior leader after Pinarayi Vijayan and AK Balan, was useful to the party due to his knack for raising money.

By then, however, Pinarayi had apparently lost trust in Jayarajan because his penchant for trouble and controversies had overshadowed his usefulness. On August 28, 2022, a month and a half after the in-flight scuffle, the CPM State Committee picked M V Govindan, a leader three years younger than Jayarajan, as the chief of the party in Kerala. The party, mired in allegations of corruption, sought someone principled and with a clean image to be at the helm. Jayarajan felt he was snubbed and has been sulking since then. He had even given up on his responsibilities as LDF convener. On Saturday, July 31, the party removed him from the post and handed over the job to Perambra MLA TP Ramakrishnan.

Party Secretary Govindan gave two reasons for removing him: one, Jayarajan had certain limitations in performing as LDF convener; two, his public statements on the morning of the voting day (April 26) that BJP leader and Kerala in-charge Prakash Javadekar had called on him in Thiruvananthapuram. The confession came against the backdrop of BJP leader Sobha Surendran and Congress state president K Sudhakaran's allegations that Jayarajan was on the verge of joining the BJP but backed off after Pinarayi Vijayan threatened him.

Saturday's downgrade is not the first for Jayarajan. In 2016, five months after the first Pinarayi Vijayan government was formed, he had to step down as the Minister for Industries and Sports because of allegations of nepotism. However, the government cleared his name, and he was re-inducted into the cabinet two years later.

In 2007, he had to step down as General Manager of party mouthpiece Deshabhimani after he took Rs 2 crore for the newspaper from tainted lottery distributor Santiago Martin. After some months, the party reinducted him. However, this time, a comeback for Jayarajan seems unlikely. Here's how he gradually became a liability for the CPM from being the "financial backbone of the party," as one leader described him.

He took on his mentor and grew
Jayarajan, or EP as he is popularly called, was initially hand-held into the party by AK Gopalan and later by MV Raghavan — two charismatic Marxist leaders from Kannur. In 1980, when youth organisations of the CPM in different states were merged to form the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) in Ludhiana, Jayarajan was elected as its first president. The present CPM State Secretary, MV Govindan, was elected the first state president of DYFI the same year. EP held the post till 1984.

In 1985, a crisis broke out in the CPM over a proposed alliance with the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). In 1986, the CPM, then led by General Secretary EMS Namboodiripad and State Secretary VS Achuthanandan, expelled MV Raghavan because he advocated for an alliance with the IUML, and importantly opposed how CPM viewed IUML as a communal party. 

Raghavan expected his mentee EP to walk out with him. The two men were from Kannur's Pappinisseri grama panchayat. Instead, Jayarajan took on his mentor and went from branch to branch explaining the party's official position and how Raghavan was wrong. In the 1987 assembly election, when Raghavan filed his nomination from Azhikode constituency with the support of Congress and IUML, Jayarajan stood against him. Raghavan barely managed to win by 1,389 votes. But the narrow defeat pitchforked EP into the big league of Kannur's politics. In 1991, Jayarajan defeated CP Moosankutty from Raghavan's Communist Marxist Party (CMP) by 7,709 votes to become an MLA for the first time. He was 41.

Jayarajan's stature grew further when he took a bullet for the movement in April 1995. While travelling from Delhi to Kerala on the Rajdhani Express, he was shot at by two men as the train passed through Chirala in Andhra Pradesh. He narrowly escaped, but one bullet remains lodged in his body to this day.

Raising funds from tainted people
His role at the grassroots level in the late 1980s helped him evolve into a troubleshooter for the party. By the mid-1990s, he had become the District Secretary of Kannur, the most influential of all district committees in Kerala. During this period, Kannur witnessed frequent bloodshed as the party clashed with the RSS for political monopoly.

By the turn of the new millennium, Jayarajan was on a spree, setting up party-controlled amusement parks, eco-parks, and cooperative hospitals, taking over District Banks and Coffee House management, and raising money to launch Kairali TV. As General Manager of Deshabhimani, he started building offices for the mouthpiece and made it financially stable.

Ahead of the Malappuram Plenum in April 2005, the then Party State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan posted EP Jayarajan as the District Secretary of Thrissur to eliminate the faction supporting VS Achuthanandan. The confidant delivered. Jayarajan could be credited with creating the corporate entity CPM is today. But with the frenzied development, came the missteps. But his safety net was the blessings of party boss Pinarayi Vijayan. 

In 2007, news broke that he accepted Rs 2 crore in bonds for Deshabhimani from controversial lottery distributor Santiago Martin. The money was taken when Chief Minister Achuthanandan was cracking down on illegal lottery sales. After initial defiance, Jayarajan was sacked. After a few months, he was reinstated as the General Manager and he continued in that post until he became a minister in the 2016 Pinarayi Vijayan government. However, controversies at Deshabhimani did not die down. He was accused of taking a bribe of Rs 1 crore from LIS Group, a Kochi-based financial institution.

In December 2013, at the end of the Palakkad Plenum, the party resolved to "keep away from controversial business persons." The following day, Deshabhimani carried the news along with a front-page ad of Soorya Group of Hotels, owned by controversial industrialist VM Radhakrishnan, also known as 'Chakku' (Sack) Radhakrishnan, who was arrested nine months earlier by the CBI.

Radhakrishnan was accused of duping Malabar Cements Ltd (MCL) of crores of rupees by supplying low-quality fly ash. Later, he was named as an accused in the suspected murder-suicide of MCL's company secretary V Saseedran and his two minor sons, Vivek and Vyas, in 2011. The party had to apologise for Jayarajan's lack of discretion.

The same month, December 2013, news broke that Jayarajan sold Deshabhimani's 32-cent plot with an old office and printing press at Manjalikulam in Thiruvananthapuram to Radhakrishnan's Capital City Hotels and Developers in Coimbatore. Jayarajan defended the sale. The party remained silent.

Change, carved in stone
When EP Jayarajan was the District Secretary, a controversy erupted over the house he built for himself. Not only was he accused of making a luxurious house, but also of using machine-cut laterite stone. The party rubbished the first allegation. The second one was tricky, as the CPM was leading protests in various laterite quarries arguing that "machine cutters will steal jobs". But the party was caught in a catch-22 situation because most of the laterite quarry owners were also CPM supporters. During an explanatory meeting, Jayarajan famously said: "Don't expect modern-day communists to survive on 'parippuvada' and black tea like in the old days. If the leaders stick to such a lifestyle, no cadres will be left in the party." The machine cutters were given the green flag.

At another time, he said toddy is a nutritious drink and if served fresh is non-alcoholic. "But today, toddy shops are primitive. People erect a shed and go there as if it is a secret place," he said, and called for modernisation of the toddy business.

'The benevolent Chittappan'
Jayarajan stepped down as Deshabhimani's General Manager when Pinarayi Vijayan made him the Minister for Sports and Industries in 2016. He was the No. 2 in the cabinet. Five months later, on October 14, 2016, he had to resign over allegations of nepotism, after his nephew and niece were appointed to important posts in two public sector units under the Department of Industries.

The then Kannur MP PK Sreemathi's son PK Sudheer Nambiar joined the Kerala Industrial Enterprises as its Managing Director. Jayarajan's wife PK Indira and Sreemathi are sisters.

Jayarajan's brother's daughter-in-law Deepthi Nishad joined the Kerala Clays and Ceramics Products Limited (KCCPL) as its General Manager. After the controversy, both of them quit and the social media honoured Jayarajan with the sobriquet the 'Benevolent Chittappan' (uncle).  The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau found no wrongdoing and Jayarajan was re-inducted into the cabinet in 2018.

Fall from grace
But soon after he stepped down as minister in 2016, the Forest Department in Kannur got a letter from Forest Minister K Raju, requesting 1200 cubic metres of teak timber free of cost for the renovation of Jayarajan's family temple at Irinavu. The letter was written by the trustees of the temple and forwarded by Jayarajan.

The officials were baffled by the quantity of timber sought, and that too, free of cost. After a preliminary inquiry, the Forest Department reasoned that the temple's need could be less than 1,200 cubic feet (35 cubic metres) and not 1,200 cubic metres. Even 35 cubic metres of timber was not available for free, officials in the district reported back to the minister, and the request was rejected. Jayarajan explained away the request for the extraordinarily large quantity of timber as a mere typo.

EP's last resort
Officials in Kannur alleged that Jayarajan might have requested the large quantity of wood for the ayurveda resort he was constructing at Morazha, MV Govindan’s hometown in Anthoor municipality, just 4km from Jayarajan's residence in Aroili. But the resort controversy was yet to hit the headlines and Pinarayi Vijayan reinducted him in the Cabinet on August 14, 2018.

Around two months before that, a Dalit colony with 30 families in Thuruthi near Morazha started an indefinite protest against the change in the alignment of the proposed NH 66 bypass. The new alignment would displace the residents of the colony.

On October 9, 2019, the 500th day of the protest, Congress leader Kodukunnil Suresh said that the alignment was changed because of an intervention by a local VIP. NHAI officials too acknowledged the VIP intervention.

In 2014, Vaidekam Ayurveda Healing Village's parent company was registered at the address of a shop near Jayarajan's house. His wife Indira and son Jaison were shareholders in the company.

The resort was being built on an 11-acre plot at Morazha. Later, when the ownership of the resort became a controversy and struggled for funds, the resort was bought by Niraamaya Retreats, owned by BJP leader Rajeev Chandrashekar's Jupiter Capital Venture.

By 2021, Kannur strongman P Jayarajan complained to the party that EP Jayarajan owned properties more than his source of income, with particular reference to the resort. By this time, the party was not too eager to come to his defence and EP Jayarajan felt he was being let down by the party. The Chief Minister too had started to cold-shoulder him. It was then that the two Youth Congress workers boarded the IndiGo flight and in their inflight protest Jayarajan saw an opportunity to redeem himself. But it cut no ice.

With MV Govindan at the helm, the rift between EP Jayarajan and Pinarayi Vijayan had apparently deepened. Jayarajan chose Govindan's Janakeeya Prathirodha Jatha — his first rally from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram — to make his displeasure public. When the Jatha reached Kannur, Jayarajan was notably absent, attending the birthday celebration of political power broker TG Nandakumar's mother. The feud between Nandakumar and Pinarayi dates back to the Lavalin days.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha election in 2024, both the UDF and the LDF resorted to the usual trope of accusing each other of conspiring to help the BJP in some seats.  Against this backdrop, EP Jayarajan said that the BJP had fielded three good candidates, including Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Suresh Gopi. The opposition latched on to it, and harped on EP's ties with Nandakumar and Chandrasekhar.

On the eve of the election, Congress state president Sudhakaran and BJP leader Sobha Surendran dropped the bomb that Jayarajan was in talks with BJP leader in-charge of Kerala Prakash Javadekar. Sobha said the talks were for Jayarajan to join the BJP because he felt sidelined in the party. Sudhakaran said Jayarajan was in talks with the BJP to save Pinarayi Vijayan from central agencies investigating the gold smuggling cases. 

Jayarajan denied the allegations but chose the election day morning to admit he had indeed met Javadekar in the presence of Nandakumar. He, however, maintained that the meeting was restricted to courtesy greetings because Javadekar invited himself to the house.

A livid Pinarayi Vijayan did not waste time in publicly censuring EP Jayarajan for maintaining a relationship with Nandakumar. After casting his vote, Pinarayi told reporters: "Under normal circumstances, we should avoid forming friendships, acquaintances, or relationships that cross certain boundaries. But going by past experiences, we know Jayarajan is not cautious enough". It was an attempt to control the election day damage.

Back then, the party and Govindan said they were happy with Jayarajan's explanation. But on Saturday, July 31, Govindan cited the election day goof as one reason to remove him from the post. EP Jayarajan is still a member of the powerful CPM Central Committee. Party observers said he would not face any disciplinary action because he had done too much and knew too much.