Pinarayi Vijayan

Some Lesser Known Facts About Pinarayi Vijayan

• He comes from a financially weak family. He was born in Pinarayi in the Kannur district.

• After completing his schooling, he worked as a handloom weaver for a year to financially aid his family.

• He was appointed as the Kannur district secretary of the Kerala Students Federation (KSF) at the age of 24, which went on to become the Students Federation of India (SFI). He, later on, became the President of the State committee.

• He was also appointed as the president of the Kerala state co-operative bank.

• During the National emergency of 1975, he was detained by the police, and as per the reports, he was also tortured in the jail. He was actually arrested because the communists were regulating the political activities from different hide-outs in Kerala. He once revealed in an interview that he was beaten up by six policemen mercilessly non-stop till he lost his consciousness and eventually fainted.

• The state achieved a remarkable development and improvement in the power generation capacity during his tenure as Electricity Minister by the augmentation of new projects and their timely execution.

• In 2002, he was elected to the Politburo of the CPI(M).

• On 26 May 2007, he, along with V. S. Achuthanandan, were suspended by the CPI(M) for making inappropriate comments against each other in the media. Vijayan was later reinstated in the party.

  

• In 2016, he became the leader of the Left Democratic Front (LDF), which is a coalition of two major political parties of Kerala, i.e. Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) and Communist Party of India (CPI). He became the 12th Chief Minister of Kerala on 25 May 2016.

• As a CM, he has introduced many schemes like Ardram Mission, Haritha Keralam Mission, Project LIFE, and Comprehensive Education Reforms.

• To determine the security of children and women in public places, he introduced India’s first-ever, all-woman police squad called the Pink Patrol.

• He was declared the third-poorest CM of all in a December 2024 report published by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).