For the people of Kannur, he is one of their own, though Kottayam is where he hails from. That should explain the Congress leader's wins in the Assembly elections from the Irikkur constituency seven times in a row since 1982.
K.C. Joseph is now set to become a Minister in the Oommen Chandy Cabinet. During electioneering, his campaigners had seen his elevation as a foregone conclusion, given his seniority in the Congress and in the legislature. His supporters highlight his 29 years of experience as a legislator. The constituency has much to cheer about when he will be sworn in as Minister on Monday.
The 65-year-old leader, who holds MA and LL.B. degrees, had entered politics through the Kerala Students' Union and served as its vice-president before becoming the general secretary of the National Students' Union of India national council and the president of the Youth Congress State unit. He is now the president of the Kottayam District Congress Committee. In the Assembly, he had been the Congress Legislature Party secretary and the chairman of various House panels.
Irikkur has been a Congress stronghold. And any protest within the party against Mr. Joseph's candidature in the constituency hardly ever affected his electoral fortunes. His seven victories on the trot is a record in Kannur. Though P.R. Kurup, socialist leader, had won seven of the eight elections he had contested in the district, he could serve as MLA only for six terms because the 1965 elections delivered a hung verdict.
Congress workers here say Mr. Joseph refuses to be drawn into unnecessary controversies and has been able to overcome opposition inside his party and outside with his experience and urbane approach. A high point of his political career was when he started what has come to be known as the Payyavur agitation in 1998, which lasted nearly two months. Mr. Joseph was the first to go on a fast in protest against the then Left Democratic Front government for scuttling a no-confidence motion moved by six United Democratic Front members in the Payyavur panchayat against the panchayat president, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) member, on September 1, 1998.
