K R Gowri Amma, who walked out of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) two decades ago and floated her own outfit, has left the Congress-led alliance in Kerala to return to the parent party.
Most of the leaders of her Janathipathya Samrakshana Samithy (JSS), or forum for the protection of democracy, however, said they would remain with the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF), ensuring a virtual split in the party.
The Congress Party also decided not to woo her back.
“She can go whichever way she wants. Who’s going to stop her?” Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, who is also the party’s state unit chief, said, dismissing the possibility of a patch-up.
The 94-year-old Gowri Amma, once projected as the state’s first woman chief minister, that too from the powerful backward Hindu Ezhava community, recently made a scathing attack on the government saying it had failed on all fronts.
At a meeting presided by her in Alappuzha yesterday, but boycotted by almost all other prominent leaders, the JSS decided to quit the UDF.
“Her only agenda is to go back to the CPM. But a majority in the party is against it,” said A N Rajan Babu, president of the JSS. “She has become a prisoner of the CPM.”
Much revered among the leftist voters for her work among the peasants and the downtrodden throughout her life, Gowri Amma was the first female student from the Ezhava community to study law and enroll as a lawyer while building the communist movement.
She was jailed on a number of occasions for participating in political activities. The CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) won an election projecting her as the chief minister only to change its mind after the polls, which led her to leave the party.
She was first elected to the Travancore Council of Legislative Assembly in 1952 and 1954 with huge margins.
She was a member of the first Communist ministry that assumed office in 1957 and continued to be a prominent figure in the Communist-led governments in 1967, 1980 and 1987.
She hit the headlines by marrying her cabinet colleague T V Thomas soon after the couple took oath as ministers and the fairy-tale but revolutionary marriage ended when a group of leaders broke away from the Communist Party of India to float the CPM and she went with the deserters.
After her party joined the UDF, Congress leader A K Antony inducted her in his cabinet when he came to power in 2001 and Oommen Chandy, who took over the reins three years later, retained her in his cabinet too.
Though she contested the 2006 and 2011 elections, she lost to CPM candidates, but she blamed it on the cross-voting by the Congress Party.