New Delhi: Ever since Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan led the Left Democratic Front in Kerala to its second successive Assembly election victory in 2021, the question of who would be his successor has loomed large.
While the successor debate has been around for some time, a survey in Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi has added more fuel — the survey, results of which were published earlier this week, showed that most Malayalis believed PWD and Tourism Minister P.A. Mohamed Riyas would be a chief minister of the state at some point in the future.
Riyas, like many of the current Pinarayi Cabinet, is young at 47 years, and has risen through the Left ranks, having been president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) before taking charge as the minister for PWD and tourism after the LDF came to power in the state for a second time.
But what’s perhaps more significant for the Left ecosystem — often viewed as the last remaining bastion standing against dynastic politics — is that Riyas is married to Vijayan’s daughter Veena, an IT professional. The two tied the knot in June 2020.
When Saji Cheriyan was forced to resign over his remarks against the Indian Constitution in June last year, one of his portfolios, youth affairs, was given to Riyas.
On 2 January, Mathrubhumi published the results of a survey conducted by the think-tank MaxEd. Called ‘Malayali Manas’, or the Malayali mind, the survey showed that 26.21 per cent of respondents saw Riyas as a future chief minister, ahead of Congress Member of Legislative Assembly Shafi Parambil (17.7 per cent), leader of opposition V.D. Satheesan (6.73 per cent) and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor (3.04 per cent), who’s been active in the state.
Although Riyas was the only one from the Pinarayi cabinet to be on the list, a separate survey for possible women chief ministers threw up the names of former health minister K.K. Shailaja (67 per cent) and her successor Veena George (13.3 per cent).
Even Riyas’s detractors concede to his popularity. He has also established himself as a mature administrator.
Case in point — his handling of the Left cadres’ protests over the poster of ‘Nna Thaan Case Kodu’, a movie about a reformed thief’s fight for justice.
As protests against the film’s tagline ‘Vazhiyil Kuzhiyunde, Ennalum Vannekane’ (there are potholes on the road leading to theatres, but you should still come) grew, a calm Riyas, whose department that tagline was seemingly mocking, met the film’s protagonist and even went for a screening himself.
ThePrint reached out to the office of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan over the phone and WhatsApp. This article will be updated when a response is received.
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Personal life rife with controversies
The son of former Kozhikode police commissioner P. M. Abdulkhader, Riyas is seen to be a man with a clean political image. He’s especially popular among the tech-savvy kadannal (wasps) — the sobriquet given to the Left’s younger cadres who are frequently seen to be targeting and vilifying any critics of the LDF.
Just before the Kerala assembly elections in 2021, Riyas was charged with the destruction of public property and sentenced to jail for an incident that happened in Kozhikode during his tenure as DYFI president.
But what has really struck the collective Malayali consciousness are the charges of domestic violence that his first wife, Sameeha Saithalvi, brought against him.
In 2015, Saithalvi accused Riyas of mental and physical abuse.
Despite these controversies, however, his contacts in Delhi from the DYFI days speak about how he would frequently fly down to Bengaluru to meet his now-wife Veena.
Abhay Mukherjee who had worked closely with Riyas in DYFI — first when he became a central committee member of the organisation and later when he took over as president in 2017 — talks about him as being a man with a “big heart”.
“He was innovative, hard-working, and had a way of connecting to workers. He is also a very good speaker. Every time I attended meetings with him in Kerala, I could see from the crowd’s reactions how well he communicated in Malayalam,” Mukherjee told ThePrint. “He also spoke some Hindi, which is rare for somebody from Kerala. Every time I travelled to Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) he would invite me home for a meal. I also became very close to his two sons.”
Riyas’s marriage to Veena also came under fire from the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) — both because of its inter-religious nature and the fact that it was the second marriage for both.
Despite this, the Kerala Communist Party of India (Marxist) continues to try to woo the IUML — a party that’s been an ally of the rival United Democratic Front, a Congress-led coalition of political parties in Kerala, for over five decades, although it has tied up with the Left in the past.
Indeed, there are reports that the Left could consider elevating Riyas in the party in an attempt to reach out to a Muslim party in the state.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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