KOCHI: The CPM can count upon three heavyweights named Jayarajan in Kannur, where the ruling party of Kerala is fighting a vicious turf war with the BJP. Among them, the one named EP is a bit more remarkable.
E P Jayarajan has been carrying a bullet in his body for more than two decades. It has become a part of him since he was shot near Ongole while returning by train from a party meeting at Vijayawada on April 12, 1995.
Since then, the 66-year-old has acquired quite a reputation as the strong man from Pappinssery, and was inducted into the cabinet by long-time comrade Pinarayi Vijayan with the plum portfolio of industries, a slot traditionally given to the second- in- command if a UDF regime is ruling the state.
After the LDF came in, it took EP no more than three weeks to make a gaffe. That was when he paid glowing tribute to Mohammed Ali as a ‘great sportsman from Kerala,' inviting the ridicule of countless trolls. That was entirely due to his second portfolio – sports, not entirely his forte. And it was soon to earn him further negative publicity when in the same week he accused the former Olympic athlete and president of the Kerala Sports Council Anju Bobby George of nepotism.
Ironically, a hundred days later, he is fending off those same allegations himself.
The charges against EP as he faces a probe by Kerala’s Vigilance and Anti-Curruption Bureau (VACB) is that he appointed two relatives – P K Sudheer, son of his sister-in-law PK Sreemathi, an MP, and Deepthi Nishad, his brother's daughter-in-law – to plum jobs in the state’s PSUs. The former, a graduate, was placed as the managing director of Kerala State Industrial Enterprises Limited and custodian of the Air Cargo Complex at a few airports in the state; the latter, a post-graduate, has been made the general manager of Kerala Clays and Ceramic Products Limited, a public sector undertaking engaged in mining.
After a vicious controversy erupted in the social media against these allegedly nepotistic postings, both niece and nephew had to resign, leaving him a sticky label of `the benevolent Chittappan' (uncle).
Jayarajan became the secretary of the CPM Kannur district committee in 1995, a post which he held for a long time. He played a vital role in setting up the Irinavu Weavers’ Cooperative Society at Irinavu, a major landmark in the area.
Known for his fiery speeches, Jayarajan, the first president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) when it was formed in 1980, entered politics through the Student Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of CPM.
The current term is his third in the Kerala Assembly. Though he was thrashed in his first tilt at his one-time mentor M V Raghavan at Azheekode in 1987, he managed a win four years later from the same seat. The last time out, he had a cakewalk to the Assembly from his incumbent seat of Mattannur where the fourth international airport of the state is to be built.
Controversies are not new to EP. He was the one who was instrumental in changing the CPM’s image of a stodgy party in Kerala into one that is not abashed at running amusement parks and tourism ventures. He was once removed as general manager of the party mouthpiece Deshabhimani on charges of accepting Rs 2 crore from a lottery scamster, Santiago Martin. But he survived unscathed.
However, it has to be seen how EP will wriggle out of the present controversy, perhaps the stickiest of his political career spanning than five decades.
