The mortal remains of former Kerala chief minister and veteran CPI(M) leader V S Achuthanandan, who died Monday at the age of 101, were taken to the Darbar Hall at the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram Tuesday.
The body will lie in state at the hall until afternoon, before the cortege leaves for his home, Alappuzha, where the leader, the last among the founders of the CPI(M) in 1964, will be cremated with state honours Wednesday.
At the Darbar Hall, Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his Cabinet colleagues, CPI(M) general secretary M A Baby, former general secretary Prakash Karat, party state secretary M V Govindan and scores of other political leaders paid tribute to him.
Achuthanandan, who served as Kerala chief minister from 2006 to 2011, had stayed away from public life since 2019, after suffering a stroke. Last month, he was admitted to a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram after a heart attack and had been on life support until he passed away.
On Monday night, his body was taken to his son V A Arunkumar’s house at Barton Hill in the city. Senior CPI(M) leaders, including CM Vijayan, were present at the house in the morning before the body was taken in a procession to the Darbar Hall, where thousands of people from a cross-section of society queued up to give a red salute to Achuthanandan.
In the afternoon, the body will be taken to Alappuzha, 140 km away from the state capital, via road. A flower-decorated low-floor bus has been converted into a hearse to carry the body to Alappuzha. En route, people will get a chance to have a final glimpse of the leader, the crowd puller of the CPI(M) for two decades since early 2000, who was also the Opposition leader for three terms — 1991-1996, 2001-2006 and 2011-2016.
In Alappuzha, the body will be taken to Achuthanandan’s Velikkakathu house in Punnapra late at night. On Wednesday afternoon, the body will be taken to the Valiyachudukadu burial ground in Alappuzha, the resting place of hundreds of martyrs of the 1946 Punnapra-Vayalar uprising against landlords and the colonial regime.
