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With the passing of former MP P. Kannan, the U.T. has lost one of its senior-most political figures from another era, who combined the gift of oratory with an uncanny way of connecting with youth.
In the heydays of a political journey that began in the youth wing of the Congress, Mr. Kannan, who was also a former Speaker and Minister, was a force to reckon with in the political sphere of U.T. and continued to be so up until the early part of 2000.
Mr. Kannan, who launched his political career in the Indian Youth Congress, went on to become a Congress Minister twice and the Speaker of the Puducherry Legislative Assembly. He was also a Member of the Rajya Sabha.
His political graph rose during the period he was a Minister, holding crucial portfolios of health and welfare in the Congress government led by M.O.H. Farook in 1985. While holding the cabinet berth, He was in-charge of the Youth Congress at the time. On the directions of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Mr. Kannan took out a padayatra covering all the 30 Assembly constituencies and hoisted the party flag in places where he toured.
The padayatra and some of the welfare measures he initiated as a Minister gave Mr. Kannan a mass appeal among the people, cutting across caste lines.
People attribute his support base among youth to the measures he undertook to provide job opportunities in various departments, including the Legislative Assembly—a fact even acknowledged by Chief Minister N. Rangasamy in his condolence message.
“Mr. Kannan got the approbation of people for creating job opportunities,” recalled Mr. Rangasamy in his message.
However, his political fortunes took a downward turn after he decided to join hands with the late G.K. Moopanar in 1996 to carve out a separate political space in the U.T. He headed Mr. Moopanar’s Tamil Maanila Congress in Puducherry. And then he merged his faction with Congress in 2001.
Then on, Mr. Kannan’s political journey had several twists and turns, with mergers and breakups with his parent party as well as his unsuccessful experiments with floating his own political outfits.
Political observers attribute the decline in his political graph to the several political somersaults he made in the latter part of his career.
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