THIRUVANANTHPAPURAM: K. C. Venugopal, Alappuzha MP has been appointed as AICC general secretary by the AICC leadership. KPCC general secretary P. C. Vishnunath too has been appointed as AICC secretary. Both the leaders have been given the responsibility of taking charge of Congress politics in Karnataka. AICC general secretary in charge of organisational matters Janardhan Dwivedi made the announcements late on Saturday night in New Delhi after the party president Sonia Gandhi signed on the dotted line. Apart from Vishnunath, Manik Thakur, Madhu Goud Yashki, Dr. Sake Sailaja Nath have also been appointed as AICC secretaries under Mr. Venugopal in Karnataka.
Kozhumal Chattady Venugopal, 54, who has been made the AICC general secretary, hails from Payyanur in Kannur, but relocated himself to Alappuzha following his victory in the Assembly elections in 1996. Alappuzha has been his adopted home since then. Though Venugopal was a Karunakaran loyalist, they later separated and he joined hands with A.K. Antony. This enabled him to continue as Youth Congress state president for eight years till 2000. When Venugopal took out a state-wide march, he was attacked by Karunakaran loyalists led by V. S. Sivakumar, who was the then Thiruvananthapuram district YC secretary, with the support of his colleague, A. P. Anil Kumar.
Venugopal was fielded from Alappuzha Assembly constituency in 2001 and 2006 also. During the Oommen Chandy government’s tenure during 2004 -06, Venugopal was entrusted with tourism and devaswom portfolios. In 2009, he was elected to the 15th Lok Sabha from Alappuzha. Following his remarkable parliamentary performance, Venugopal was made head of several committees including estimate, transport, tourism, culture and member of agriculture consultative committee. By 2011, he was promoted as the union minister of state of energy and by 2012, he got the additional responsibility of civil aviation.
Currently, he is the Congress party’s whip in the Lok Sabha. During his college days, Venugopal was a volleyball team captain and Calicut University team player. A post-graduate in mathematics and also a law graduate from the Thiruvananthap-uram Law Academy, he was active in Congress politics right from his school days in Kannur. In 1989, he was brutally attacked by the police at the Nandavanam armed reserve camp during chief minister E. K. Nayanar’s time. Dr. K. Asha, English professor at Dhanuvachapuram NSS College, is his wife. Son Gokul and daughter Parvathy are studying at Mar Ivanios College and school respectively.
