'I have never seen a common man tapping a chief minister on the shoulder and giving him his petition, like needing money for a child admitted in a hospital.'
Former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy, who passed away in Bengaluru early on Tuesday, was a true man of the masses. As evidenced by the fact that thousands of people thronged his family home in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday afternoon, evening and night to pay their last respects to the departed leader as well as on Wednesday when his body was taken to Kottayam by road.
The 79-year-old leader, who had been chief minister twice, represented Puthuppally constituency for 53 years.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com spoke to advocate Krishnan Sreenivasan, secretary, All India Congress Committee, on what made Chandy such a popular leader and how he will be remembered.
When I think of Oommen Chandy the first thought that comes to my mind is that he was the man of the masses.
During his tenure as chief minister of Kerala, one could see the common man entering his office without any hesitation to get his or her work done.
Chandy had instructed his security officials that the common man must not be harassed if they are trying to approach him for their work.
I have never seen a common man tapping a chief minister on the shoulder to stop him from behind and giving him his petition, like needing money for a child admitted in a hospital.
He was one politician who never turned away the needy.
He was working for 18 hours a day, whether or not he was in power.
His doors were open to the public from 6 am till midnight, and anybody could enter with his/her request petition.
His philosophy was that politics is an opportunity to solve problems of the poorest of the poor, and he never deviated from this path in his political career.
He came to politics from his student days by first becoming a member of the Congress party students wing (National Students Union of India) from where he went on to join the Youth Congress and from where he went on to become a member of the state assembly from Puthuppally.
He held that seat for 53 years and I feel this is some sort of a record in the history of Indian politics. We hardly see such leaders in today's time.
There were many opportunities for him to move to New Delhi to do politics at the Centre, but he refused to go as he did not want to be away from the people of Kerala.
He felt that by being an MLA it is easier to solve the people's problem rather than going to New Delhi and holding some central post in the party.
What he enjoyed the most was to be among the people, and he worked 18 hours a day to sort out their problems.
He will be most remembered for holding 'public adalats'.
He went to the people to solve their problems rather than sitting in offices and making them come to him.
He used to tell bureaucrats and politicians that they must not sit in the office to solve people's problems but go to them and solve their problems.
He won the United Nations award for this adalat initiative.
He was absolutely truthful in politics and one thing I never saw was him getting angry.
He was a true follower of Congress leader A K Antony and followed his path of politics of honesty, and he learnt good administration skills from the late chief minister, K Karunakaran.
No matter what happened, he never lost his cool.
At times he sat at a stretch for 16 hours in his adalat programme, but never complained or got angry.
In fact, people told him to take a break and take rest, but he did not leave the place till the last man's problem was solved.
Chandy used to say that there were chances that he might make an error of judgement in five to 10 percent of the cases but that did not hinder him as he said that 90 percent of the work would be done if done with the right intention to help the poor.
His passing away is a huge loss to the Congress party and for Kerala state.
