In the faction-ridden Congress politics, Kozhikode was not exactly a stronghold of the ‘A’ group commanded by A.K. Antony and Oommen Chandy. The former Chief Minister K. Karunakaran had a solid grip on the party organisation here. Mr. Chandy also had kept a loyal group of leaders and workers from Kozhikode along with him and stood with them in their hours of grief and happiness.
K.C. Abu, former district Congress committee president and a close confidante of Mr. Chandy, says he had a more-than-five-decade-old bond with the former Chief Minister. “I came into contact with him when Mr. Chandy was the State president of the Youth Congress and I was its Kunnamangalam mandalam president in the early 70s. During the Emergency, we travelled together to Guwahati in Assam to attend the All-India Congress Committee session held there. We stayed at the residence of one Congress leader called Prabhakar Baruah,” he says. Mr. Abu recalls how Mr. Chandy got excited after seeing the Brahmaputra river and took a bath in it wearing a ‘dhoti’.
“He was very close to my family too. Mr. Chandy attended the weddings of all my daughters,” Mr. Abu says. Mr. Chandy was also the first to tell Mr. Abu about his proposed appointment as the DCC president in 2006.
“My name was nowhere on the list of probable contenders for the post. He told me about it four days in advance, with a warning to keep it a secret. But I could not help but share it with a couple of my close friends,” he says.
Mr. Abu points out that Mr. Chandy was always a pillar of strength for the Congress workers in the district when they needed help. The late N.P. Moideen and T. Siddique, MLA, and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee working president, are some of the other leaders from Kozhikode considered close to Mr. Chandy.
