ALAPPUZHA: Friday marked an end to the political life of the iron lady of Kerala politics K R Gowri. Her defeat is not only a disaster for her party but curtains are also down for her in the same battlefield where it all began 54 years ago. It was in 1957 that Gowri Amma was elected to the first Kerala Legislative Assembly from Cherthala constituency as a Communist Party candidate.
After all the ups and downs in her long political career, she has tasted defeat at the same constituency which once held her close to its heart. Making a desperate effort this time, Gowri lost to CPI’s P Thilothaman by 18,315 votes. Sadly, her defeat comes at a time when none of her party candidates made it at the hustings.
Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithy (JSS), the party she formed in 1994 after parting ways with the CP(M, lost all four seats. Her candidature had courted controversy on account of her age.
“There is nothing wrong with party workers but the party leadership should have acted wisely. Though the people of Cherthala had a good relationship with Gowri Amma, they reacted to the wrong decisions of the party leadership. The JSS has met with a fate that we all had expected,” said SNDP Yogam general secretary Vellappally Natesan said. Gowri became the seniormost legislator in the state when she was last elected to the eleventh Assembly from the Aroor constituency in 2001. In an eventful career spanning over six decades, she was first elected to the erstwhile Travancore-Cochin Legislative Assembly in 1952 and 1954.
After the formation of Kerala Legislative Assembly in 1957, she was twice elected to the Assembly from Cherthala and eight times from Aroor. Her political career took a paradigm shift in 1994 when she ceased to be a member of the CPM and formed the JSS.
The year 2011 turned out to be the most decisive for Gowri as there was speculation on her returning to her ‘alma mater’. Though CPM leaders G Sudhakaran and Thomas Isaac favoured her return to the CPM, Gowri chose not to leave the UDF considering the interests of her party workers.