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Journalism of Courage
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, FEBRUARY 14: For a giantkiller like A. Neelalohitadasan Nadar, who once trounced CPI stalwart M.N. Govindan Nair by over one lakh votes in the Lok Sabha election in Thiruvananthapuram, it has been a pathetic fall.
A man who once was the youngest AICC member, who got a pat from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for his felicitous speeches in Hindi in Parliament, who became a Minister thrice, now finds his reputation in tatters after a woman IAS officer accused him of sexual harassment.
An ace political manipulator, Nadar would still have used his wits to hold on to the ministerial chair, but for the serious nature of the allegation, its likely adverse political fallouts for the LDF Government and the media blitzkrieg against him.
There have been former Ministers like R Balakrishna Pillai and M P Gangadharan and a former Chief Minister, K Karunakaran, who had to give up office under circumstances such as the court finding them guilty of corruption charges or passing strictures against theirconduct as public servants.
But Nadar is the first Minister in the State to bow out of office due to a sex scandal. Nadar’s political career of 35 years was marked by ups and downs. Though a Left sympathiser in his student days, Nadar later became an activist of the Congress-led Kerala Students Union and Youth Congress when he was elected chairman of Kerala University Union. He served as a member of KPCC and AICC before he left the Congress with Jagjivan Ram and H N Bahuguna during the Emergency to form the Congress For Democracy (CFD).
He was elected to the Assembly for the first time from Kovalam in 1977 on a CDF ticket with LDF support. After the CFD merged with the Janata Party, he became its State Committee member. When the CFD re-emerged at the national level in 1979, he became its State president. He became the Minister for Labour, Housing, Power, Irrigation and Law in the C H Mohammed Koya Ministry which assumed power in 1979. The same year, he returned to Congress with CFD merging with it at thenational level.
His crowning moment came when he was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980, humbling M N Govindan Nair. Within six months of his election, he left Congress and thereafter had brief stints in the Democratic Socialist Party and Dalit Mazdoor Kisan Party (DMKP), before embracing the Lok Dal and its later incarnation, Janata Dal. He lost the 1984 Lok Sabha election as a DMKP candidate but staged a comeback to the Assembly in 1987 on a Lok Dal ticket and became Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs in the second Nayanar Ministry. His legislative career got a beating after his election to the Assembly from Kovalam in 1991 by a narrow margin of 22 votes was declared null and void by the High Court.
