THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a day when nostalgia hung heavy in the air, and W H Auden and Charles Lamb were quoted with wishful yearning.
June 29, 1998. The day the Kerala Assembly held its last sitting at the ‘Assembly Chamber’ or what is today the Old Assembly Hall at the Secretariat.
It was also where the Kerala Assembly had its first sitting - on April 27, 1957.
On Thursday, the 14th Assembly will relive that memory with a special sitting in this hall. In 1998, the Assembly had bid adieu to the hall with a special mention. E K Nayanar, the Chief Minister, even quoted Auden: "Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.’’
For the record, it was the first day of the eighth session of the tenth Kerala Assembly. Incidentally, when the 14th Assembly meets in this hall on Thursday, there will be two sitting members who had spoken at the special mention in 1998: K M Mani and P J Joseph, who was then minister for Education and Works. P K Kunhalikutty, whose farewell speech also is preserved in the Assembly archives, too would have been there as a member had he not resigned as a legislator on Tuesday. Mani, whose career as an MLA was 31 years old in 1998, had quoted Charles Lamb to convey his feelings about the historic hall; ‘’The wood has entered into my soul.’’
M Vijayakumar, the Speaker then, opened the special mention by announcing the sittings at the hall were coming to an end and the action would shift to the spanking new - and considerably larger - new Assembly complex at Palayam. ‘’The current Legislative Chamber, which stood witness to the economic, social, political and cultural evolution of Travancore, Thiru-Kochi and unified Kerala, is becoming a part of history after 59 years,’’ he said.
Dewan C P Ramaswamy Iyer had formally inaugurated the old hall on February 8, 1939. On February 9, the fourth session of the second Travancore Sree Mulam Sabha opened, chaired by the Dewan. After the formation of Kerala state, the Kerala Assembly held its first sitting on April 27, 1957. It held 2,184 of its sittings there. The Assembly also enacted 1,062 Bills in this hall. "We are moving to the new Assembly complex with great hope as well as some anxiety. Only time will tell whether the modern facilities of the new building will make us more efficient or more lazy,’’ A K Antony, then Opposition Leader, had said. Kunhalikutty, amid his speech, even wondered whether it would not have been enough to air-condition the old hall and retain it!
R Balakrishna Pillai, P R Kurup, V P Ramakrishna Pillai, K R Gowri, A C Shanmughadas, K E Ismail, T M Jacob and P R Kurup also spoke on that day. Jacob’s was the practical voice: "Sir, let’s simply see this as our destiny. There is no need for us to move to the new hall by singing a dirge and paying tributes to this hall. The Assembly continues.’’