Vadasiri Damodaran Sathisan, popularly known as VD Sathisan, was inducted into the Congress party through its student wing, the Kerala Students Union (KSU), in the early 1980s.
Sathisean’s oratorical skills soon became apparent on campus. Thereafter, his leadership skills came to the fore during his stint as a three-time union consultant at MG University, Kottayam. Despite his popularity, the young leader was overlooked for key positions at King Saud University and the Youth Congress.
A decade later, in 1996, Sathisean finally got the nod from the Congress leadership to contest the Paravur assembly seat, a communist stronghold not far from his hometown, Nettoor, in Ernakulam district.
Although Sathisan lost the elections in the Left Democratic Front wave that swept the state – by a small margin (1,116 votes) – this was the beginning of a long political journey for him. Over the next five years, he set up camp in Paravur and focused resolutely on fixing organizational weaknesses. This hard work paid off five years later, in 2001, when he won from the same constituency, defeating a Left MLA by more than 7,000 votes.
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In 2011, when the United Democratic Front (UDF) led by Congress leader Oommen Chandy came to power with a narrow majority, Sathisean, then a three-time UDF member and an accomplished speaker in the assembly, was widely considered a candidate for a ministerial berth. But this was not to be.
“When we were in the opposition (from 2006 to 2011), I sat in the second row, right behind Chandy. I was like a soldier on the war front. But when the United Democratic Front came to power, I was asked to sit in the last row. Maybe someone decided that I could only sit in the last row. I was sad at first, but I ignored it. I decided that even if I had to sit in the last row, I would express my opinion,” Sathisean said in a 2013 interview.
But nearly a decade and a half later, on Thursday, when the Congress leadership appointed Sathisan as Kerala’s chief minister after he led the United Democratic Front (UDF) coalition to a resounding victory by bagging 102 of the 140 seats, the 61-year-old, a six-time MLA, may finally believe that his loyalty to the party and his political style has finally paid off.
Natural selection
In the run-up to the election campaign, Satheesan was seen by many as the “natural choice” for the post of chief minister should the United Democratic Front win. After all, in 2021, when he was appointed Leader of the Opposition, the CPI(M)-led LDF returned to power with 99 of the 140 seats, with the Congress leadership’s morale sagging.
The Congress was mired in political quicksand – on the one hand, the LDF was making inroads in the traditional Christian and Muslim vote banks, and on the other, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was gaining influence among its core Hindu base. Sathisan and his team had to work hard and fast.
He set out to repair relations with existing allies and bring new parties and social groups into the United Democratic Front fold. In an interview with HT in March this year, Sathisan spoke of his desire for the United Democratic Front to become more than just a confederation of parties.
“I wanted it to be a broader political platform that included influencers, opinion makers and even comrades from the Left. While the current LDF is on the far right of the political spectrum, we represent Nehru’s left. Those who supported the LDF from an ideological point of view are no longer with them, they are with us,” he said.
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Besides targeting the LDF government on ideological and policy issues, Sathisean focused on mending the cracks in the Congress armour, especially at the grassroots level, to turn the party into an election-winning machine. He restored relations with leaders of the Christian and Muslim communities, realizing that the party’s chances of winning in 2026 depend strongly on the support of minorities.
The efforts have paid off. Of the five by-polls between 2021 and 2026, the United Democratic Front won four of them, including clinching its LDF seat. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the UDF won 18 of the 20 seats in the state Parliament, losing just one seat from its tally in 2019. This was followed by the UDF sweeping a majority of the three-tier rural and urban local bodies in Kerala in December last year – its best result in panchayat polls since 2010.
Thus, after the assembly elections, when the All India Congress Committee leadership began its deliberations on who should become the next prime minister – a process that eventually stretched over ten days – many in Kerala wondered why the party had taken so long. Hundreds of party members and activists took to the roads carrying placards reading “Pada nayichavan nayikatte” (Let the person who led the battle rule).
Two other names did the rounds: KC Venugopal and Ramesh Chennithala. At one point, it looked as if Venugopal, who was supported by several MLAs, would become the chief minister. In the end, the Congress chose Satyasan’s ‘jana vikaram’ (public sentiment) over legislative support.
