TIA Correspondent
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A large number of people from all walks of life have paid their last tributes to senior Congress leader and former Kerala chief minister K. Karunakaran, who passed away here Thursday.
AICC chief Sonia Gandhi, Prime minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P. Chidambaram are set to arrive here to pay their tribute to the departed leader.
A four-time chief minister of Kerala, Karunakaran, died Thursday evening of old age and illness. Whole state is mourning his death of 92 year old veteran leader.
thousands of people poured in despite rains, on to the streets as the body of the departed leader was taken from the Ananthapuri Hospital, where he was admitted Dec 10, to his home nearly 10 km away in a closed ambulance as news of his death spread.
The leader who worked with Jawaharlal Nehru and was a confidant of Indira Gandhi, a closeness that made him Kerala’s undisputed Congress leader.
Kerala government announced a public holiday Friday. The cremation will take place in his hometown Thrissur Christmas day Saturday, the event expected to draw a mass of people from all over Kerala.
As Congress leaders described his death as a huge loss to the party, Marxist Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan rushed to the hospital to salute a man he had politically opposed all his life.
"He was a leader who relentlessly worked for the development of Kerala, and his attachment to the ordinary worker was something that was unique to him," Achuthanandan said.
Born in Kannur July 5, 1918, Karunakaran tasted his first electoral victory in in 1945 when he was elected to the Trissur Municipal Council on a Congress ticket.
He was elected to the Kerala assembly seven times consecutively from Mala in Trissur, from 1967 to 1991. He was a minister, leader of the opposition thrice, chief minister four times, and was elected to the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha thrice and twice respectively.
Karunakaran survived two serious road accidents in the 1990s, one of which needed treatment in the US.
He had to quit as chief minister again in March 1995 when his name was linked to a police official in what was known as the "ISRO spy scandal". Karunakaran was the industry minister in the cabinet of P.V. Narasimha Rao.
To hurt Antony, he did the unthinkable and supported the Left in a Lok Sabha election. Then, he dramatically dumped the Congress and formed his own party in 2005, with the intention of crossing over to the Left.
That did not happen and he returned to the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). He later merged his party with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), a Left ally.
Finally, Karunakaran returned to the Congress. But his son refused to follow suit and, to his shock, renounced all ties with his father.
Karunakaran a voice of secularism: Sonia
Congress president Sonia Gandhi Thursday expressed deep sorrow on the death of senior Congress leader K. Karunakaran and described him as a national leader who was the voice of secularism and national integrity.
In her condolence message, Gandhi said that in his death, the Congress party has lost a great leader whose absence will be deeply felt by all Congressmen across the country.
"The party has lost not only a great leader from Kerala but also a national leader who was a voice of secularism and national integrity," she said.