CPM Polit Bureau member M A Baby will be the party's new General Secretary. Baby will now be the second Malayali to hold the post after EMS Namboothiripad.

His political journey began during his school days when he joined the Kerala Students Federation (KSF), the predecessor to the Students' Federation of India (SFI).

He pursued his pre-degree and undergraduate studies in politics (BA Politics) at SN College, Kollam. During his college years, he emerged as an active SFI worker and eventually became the organisation’s state president in 1975. He later joined the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and subsequently became a member of the CPI(M). In 1979, he rose to become the national president of the SFI.

Baby was inducted into the CPM state committee in 1985. Two years later, in 1987, he became the national president of DYFI and was subsequently elevated to the CPM Central Committee in 1989.

In 1986, at the age of 32, M A Baby was elected to the Rajya Sabha. He was re-elected in 1992 and served as a member of the Upper House till 1998. From 2006 to 2011, he served as the Minister for Education in the LDF government led by V S Achuthanandan.

At the 20th CPM Party Congress held in Kozhikode in 2012, Baby was inducted into the party’s Politburo. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he contested from the Kollam constituency but was defeated by N K Premachandran of the RSP.

The freshly elected General Secretary sought to dispel the notion that there was opposition to his candidature. "It was Mohammed Salim (the incumbent West Bengal CPM state secretary) who proposed my name and Dr Ashok Dhawale (the national president of All India Kisan Sabha, and one of the leading lights of the farmers' agitation that forced the centre to repeal the three fam laws) seconded it," Baby said.

Earlier, there was speculation that the West Bengal unit wanted Dhawale to be the new General Secretary. Five of the 16-member Polit Bureau reportedly opposed Baby’s elevation to the post. Members from West Bengal — Surjya Kanta Mishra, Nilotpal Basu, Mohammed Salim, Ramchandra Dome — and Ashok Dhawale from Maharashtra were among those who opposed Baby’s appointment. Party sources said Prakash Karat recommended only M A Baby for the post.

Three leaders who have crossed 75 have been granted exemption, and will continue in the Central Committee: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami (member of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly) and Kerala's former health minister P K Sreemathy.

After the age limit caused the exit of senior leaders from the CPM politburo (PB) except Pinarayi Vijayan, seven new faces have been inducted. Vijoo Krishnan, the national secretary of All India Kisan Sabha, is one of them. Though he was born to Malayali parents, Vijoo Krishnan's work was mostly with farmers in other parts of the country. He was one of the leaders of the Kisan Long March, a peaceful 200-km farmers' protest walk from Nashik to Mumbai that eventually persuaded the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to give the farmers certain time-bound assurances.

Already, the PB has three Kerala faces: Pinarayi Vijayan, M A Baby and A Vijayaraghavan.

Besides Krishnan, the other six incoming PB members are: Mariam Dhawale (the general secretary of All India Democratic Women's Association; Maharashtra-based), U Vasuki (the vice president of the general secretary of All India Democratic Women's Association. She is from Tamil Nadu), R Arunkumar (heads the foreign affairs concerns of the party and is based in the party's Delhi headquarters), Jithendra Chaudhury (the CPM Tripura state secretary), K Balakrishnan (former Tamil Nadu state secretary and also former MLA in TN Assembly), Amra Ram (the CPM Rajashthan state secretary), and Shreedeep Bhattacharya (West Bengal leader and engineer by profession).

The leaders on their way out are: Prakash Karat, Manik Sarkar, Brinda Karat, Subhashini Ali, Surjya Kanta Mishra and G Ramakrishnan.

The new 85-member Central Committee has 30 new members. Three are from Kerala: Kerala's former excise minister T P Ramakrishnan, former MLA K S Saleekha and Puthalath Dineshan, the chief editor of Deshabhimani.

Leaders who had retired at the 24th Party Congress (Manik Sarkar, Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat, Subhashini Ali) and earlier (S Ramachandran Pillai, Biman Basu, Hannan Mollah) will be special invitees at the CC.