The word that perhaps best defined V D Satheesan through the 2026 election campaign was “Vismayam”—wonder, amazement. It was a word he deployed repeatedly while attacking the ruling CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), springing surprise after surprise in a campaign that steadily altered the political mood in Kerala.
There were the political shocks: leaders and fellow travellers from the Left drifting towards the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), disgruntled voices within the ruling camp finding space in Satheesan’s expanding opposition platform, and social groups once alienated from the Congress returning to the fold. Leaders like Aisha Potty from the CPM and former LDF ally P V Anvar becoming politically aligned with the anti-LDF camp symbolised the churn he managed to engineer.
Five years ago, few would have predicted that the Congress, reduced to just 21 seats in the Assembly in 2021, would storm back to power with a commanding 102-seat mandate. Fewer still would have imagined that the man leading that resurgence would be someone who had never held ministerial office even once.
And yet, after ten days of intense lobbying, factional manoeuvring and suspense in New Delhi, the Congress high command finally named V D Satheesan as Kerala’s 13th Chief Minister.
In his very first press conference after being elected leader of the Congress Legislature Party, Satheesan called his elevation “Daivaniyogam”—God's plan.
The phrase was strikingly personal. It also captured the improbable nature of his rise.
Born on May 31, 1964, at Nettoor in Kochi to K Damodara Menon and V Vilasini Amma, Satheesan studied at Panangad High School and Sacred Heart College, Thevara, before pursuing MSW from Rajagiri College of Social Sciences. He later completed law degrees, including an LLM from Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram, and practised at the Kerala High Court for nearly a decade.
Politics, however, remained his natural arena.
His rise began through student politics. He served as chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi University Union during 1986-87 and later as secretary of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), earning a reputation as a sharp speaker and quick political organiser.
His electoral debut, though, ended in defeat.
In 1996, contesting from Paravur—then considered a Communist stronghold—Satheesan lost to CPI leader P Raju by 1,116 votes. Five years later, he returned to defeat the same rival and enter the Assembly for the first time. Since then, he has never tasted defeat.
Election after election—2006, 2011, 2016, 2021, and now 2026—he transformed Paravur into a personal bastion while steadily evolving into the principal political face of the Congress in Kerala.
When Satheesan took over as Leader of Opposition in May 2021, the Congress was in ruins. The party had been reduced to 21 seats after a second consecutive Assembly defeat. Cadres were demoralised, factional wars were intensifying, and the CPM appeared politically invincible under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Satheesan’s first task was psychological: make the Congress look alive again.
His attacks against the government were relentless, media-savvy, and calibrated for the social media age. He sensed early that beneath the LDF’s aura of dominance, public fatigue was slowly building. He sharpened the Congress narrative around corruption, governance failures, welfare delivery gaps, and minority anxieties.
But perhaps his most consequential intervention was ideological repositioning.
Satheesan aggressively projected the Congress as the “real Left”, accusing the CPM of drifting towards authoritarian and right-leaning governance. He reached out not only to traditional UDF voters but also to sections of left sympathizers, intellectuals, and social influencers disillusioned with the ruling front.
Months before the election, he reportedly instructed Congress workers to soften hostility towards ordinary CPM cadre—smile at them, engage them, open political conversations. It sounded unusual in Kerala’s combative political climate, but it reflected his understanding that political shifts often begin emotionally before they become electoral.
Political strategist Dominic Savio perhaps captured Satheesan’s strengths best. “He understands television. He understands the public mood. He has instinctive political reflexes. And unlike many Congress leaders, he can communicate sharply and quickly,” Savio observed.
Those qualities became central to the Congress revival. Satheesan was no longer merely reacting to the government. He was setting the political agenda.
Yet Savio also identified what many within the Congress privately see as Satheesan’s biggest weakness: an excessive focus on personal image. “A leader who hopes to head a coalition cannot always behave like a solo public brand,” Savio argued.
That criticism has followed Satheesan for years.
The most cited example remains the Joju George controversy during the fuel price protests. When Congress workers blocked roads and actor Joju George publicly confronted them, public sentiment rapidly turned against the agitation. Satheesan quickly aligned himself with that public mood, distancing himself from the protest led by his own party workers.
Critics felt he prioritised personal positioning over organisational solidarity. Admirers saw a politician willing to acknowledge public discomfort even when inconvenient to his own party.
That contradiction defines Satheesan.
He is simultaneously a mass politician and an image-conscious modern communicator. A street fighter who also instinctively understands optics. A Congress traditionalist who functions like a politician shaped by the television and digital era.
During the 2026 campaign, that instinct was especially visible in his handling of communal issues.
As SNDP Yogam general secretary Vellappally Natesan made controversial remarks targeting Muslims in Malappuram and Christians in Pala, Satheesan took an unusually firm stand. He accused Natesan of attempting communal polarisation and acting as a “mouthpiece” for the ruling establishment.
At a time when many politicians preferred caution around sensitive community equations, Satheesan’s intervention positioned him as a secular figure willing to publicly confront divisive rhetoric. Minority communities, especially Muslims and Christians increasingly anxious about the broader national political climate, began viewing him as a leader prepared to defend constitutional secularism.
That support became politically invaluable. But it also points to the enormous challenge awaiting him as Chief Minister.
Kerala’s social coalition is layered, demanding, and delicate. Every major community—Hindus, Muslims, Christians, caste organisations, minority institutions, trade unions and business interests—expects accommodation and representation. Satheesan’s sharp political positioning helped him build a winning coalition. Governing it will be far more complicated.
The road to his final selection as chief minister also exposed deep fault lines within the Congress.
Despite the decisive mandate, the party took ten long days to settle on a leader. The aggressive lobbying by supporters of Satheesan, K C Venugopal and Ramesh Chennithala laid bare the intensity of internal rivalry.
There were endless consultations, competing power centres, rumours from Delhi corridors, and open shows of strength by rival camps. By the time the high command finally announced Satheesan’s name, some sheen had undeniably been lost from the spectacular 102-seat victory.
Yet, in the end, popular perception appeared to prevail.
Congress MLA-designate V T Balram summed it up emotionally, saying the Congress leadership had merely formalised what “the people of Kerala had already decided in their hearts”. He described Satheesan’s elevation as a decision rooted in public sentiment and said he was arriving not merely as the Chief Minister of the Congress or UDF but as “the Chief Minister of the people of Kerala”.
That public legitimacy may ultimately become Satheesan’s greatest political asset as he navigates the contradictions within his own party.
Because for all his electoral brilliance, Satheesan now enters entirely unfamiliar terrain.
He has never been a minister. Never run a department. Never handled the machinery of government from inside. His political life has largely been built in opposition—debating, critiquing, mobilizing, and attacking.
Now he must govern.
And governance is rarely as dramatic as opposition politics.
The expectations are staggering. Welfare promises must be implemented. Bureaucracy must be managed. Factional Congress leaders must be accommodated. Community pressures must be balanced. Minority confidence must be protected without alienating other sections. And above all, he must prove that the strategist who dismantled the Left can also build a stable administration.
For now, however, the mood around him remains one of fascination.
The boy from Nettoor who once lost his first election… the lawyer who never became minister… the Opposition leader who rebuilt a collapsing Congress… the strategist who sensed Kerala’s changing political pulse before anyone else… has now become chief minister.
And in the end, perhaps the most fitting word for V D Satheesan’s journey is still the same word he himself popularised during the campaign.
Vismayam.