- Friday, February 28, 2025
Secretaries and other party officials said the purchase of the expensive car was a “wrong trend” and not acceptable.
By: Shubham Ghosh
WEEKS AFTER a communist trade union leader in the southern Indian state of Kerala stoked controversy by purchasing a luxury car worth Rs 50 lakh (47,663), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Friday (16) removed him from all official responsibilities.
According to India Today, PK Anil Kumar, was the general secretary of the Kerala Petroleum and Gas Workers Union, which was linked to CITU (Centre of Indian Trade Unions), the trade union of the CPI(M).
In India’s Kerala, communist union leader faces flak after buying pricey Mini Cooper
The decision to drop Kumar was taken at the meetings of the CPI(M)’s Ernakulam district committee and district secretariat meetings, the report said. MV Govindan, the party’s state secretary, reportedly felt Kumar’s continued membership in the party would be against its principles. Secretaries and other officials said the purchase of the car, a Mini Cooper, was a “wrong trend” and not acceptable.
Pictures of Kumar buying a car went viral on social media and triggered the controversy. The communist leader was also trolled on social media with many netizens mocking him by saying he wanted to study how capitalists live by buying a car.
“Why do all comrades love Mini Cooper,” asked a person on Facebook.
“How can he get away with saying that his wife has a job,” another said, after Kumar defended the expensive buy saying that his wife, who works at the Indian Oil Corporation, a public-sector undertaking, bought the car.
“Comrade Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has also done a study on this,” another person wrote in Malayalam. He referred to Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, a late communist leader who had in 2017 had courted controversy by campaigning in a red Mini Cooper that belonged to a person accused of smuggling gold.
Kerala is the only communist-ruled state in India.
A similar incident took place in the CPI(M) in the eastern state of West Bengal, which was under the communist’s rule for 34 years, where a young member of the party’s state committee, faced flak from the ruling party after buying a car priced Rs 22 (20,972). He later said that it was sponsored by his father.
