Thiruvananthapuram Feb 4 (IANS) Top Central and state Congress leaders gathered at the party’s Kerala headquarters on Wednesday for a cake-cutting ceremony to mark the 63rd birthday of party General Secretary, Organisation, K.C. Venugopal.
Held in his absence, yet attended by virtually the entire top brass of the state Congress as well as leaders from outside, the event underlined the clout Venugopal wields within the party and also marked his five decades in public life.
The presence of Congress Screening Committee Chairman Madhusudan Mistry, state Congress unit President Sunny Joseph, Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan, Congress Working Committee member Ramesh Chennithala, Congress General Secretary Deepa Dasmunshi, senior Screening Committee members and state unit’s Working Presidents gave the gathering the character of a political statement rather than a routine observance.
Venugopal’s rise has been neither abrupt nor accidental.
A product of the Congress student movement, he cut his political teeth in the Kerala Students Union before going on to lead both the KSU and the Indian Youth Congress at the state level.
His organisational grounding translated into electoral success when he entered the Kerala Assembly from Alappuzha in 1996, retaining the seat in 2001 and 2006.
As Minister for Devaswom and Tourism in the Oommen Chandy government between 2004 and 2006, he consolidated his administrative credentials.
The transition to national politics came in 2009, when he won the Alappuzha Lok Sabha seat and later served as Minister of State in the second UPA government from 2011 to 2014.
Though he stayed out of the 2019 general election — a decision that coincided with the Congress losing Alappuzha to the CPI-M — Venugopal’s relevance within the party only deepened.
His election to the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan in 2020 and his subsequent elevation as General Secretary in charge of organisation placed him at the nerve centre of the Congress’s revival efforts.
His return to Parliament in 2024, regaining Alappuzha for a third time, completed a full political arc.
The birthday celebration in Thiruvananthapuram, notably without the man himself, served as a reminder that his influence today extends well beyond his mere presence.
–IANS
sg/vd
