KM Mani, a titan who could never become Kerala CM, dies

KOCHI: Karingozhakkal Mani Mani, or KM Mani, 86, one of modern Kerala’s tallest political leaders passed away on Tuesday. The Kerala Congress (Mani) chairman, who had been unwell since January and was undergoing treatment for a chronic pulmonary ailment in a Kochi hospital, breathed his last at 4.57pm. He’s survived by his wife and six children.

An MLA for a record 54 years and undefeated from a single constituency – Pala – 13 times, Mani was finance minister 11 times and won every conceivable political laurel, except, of course, the most prized one: The chief minister’s post eluded him despite his best efforts, an indirect admission that the ‘regionalism’ and ‘reformism’ he espoused was always secondary in a society and political milieu fixated on universalist ideas and causes.

A state cabinet minister for 24 years in as many as 12 governments of different, often contradictory, persuasions, Mani epitomised a politics dictated by pragmatism and force of personality in a state where ideology reigned supreme. Immensely popular at the grassroots level, Mani’s ready wit and spontaneous exuberance were a foil to the ready ruthlessness with which he often undercut rivals, most of them friends-turned-foes.

He won his first assembly election in 1965 but the assembly was not convened. He formally became a legislator for the first time two years later. Mani first became a minister in 1975 in the Achutha Menon cabinet and since then was a fixture in the cabinets of E K Nayanar, P K Vasudevan Nair, C H Mohammed Koya, K Karunakaran, A K Antony and Oommen Chandy. As finance minister, he presented 13 budgets, another record, and is widely credited for having elevated budgets to something much beyond a book-keeping exercise.

The only blot on his long career was the so-called bar scandal, when he was accused in 2014 of taking a Rs 1 cr bribe for renewing licenses of 400 bars. After the Kerala high court pointedly commented on his involvement in the case, Mani resigned as finance minister in Nov 2015. In 2016, he parted ways with UDF and Congress, whose ally he was for more than four decades, accusing its leadership of not standing by him but, perennial pragmatist that he was, returned to the fold two years later. Politically conscious Kerala didn’t bat an eyelid. They were always at home with K M Mani.