A few months before the Assembly polls, V.D. Satheesan, the then Opposition Leader of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, created a political flutter by declaring that he would opt for political exile if he failed to bring the party back to power. The announcement was greeted with usual cynicism.Many political observers even dismissed it as an astute move of a canny politician to energise the party and its rank and file for the crucial election. A few months after the declaration, Mr. Satheesan is set to assume office as Kerala Chief Minister, after leading the Congress-led alliance to victory over the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and outmanoeuvring two senior colleagues in the race for the top post.The Congress, after being out of power for a decade, and Mr. Satheesan could ill-afford a defeat in the election as it would have spelt doom for both the organisation and himself, especially at a time when the national leadership of the Congress had reposed much faith in him to revive its fortunes in the State. Five years ago, the party appointed him as the Leader of the Opposition, overlooking the claims of Ramesh Chennithala, his one-time leader.Mr. Satheesan, who has been consistently representing the Paravur Assembly constituency in Ernakulam district for six terms, began his political career with a defeat in his debut contest in 1996 when he lost to P. Raju of the CPI.The young lawyer of the Kerala High Court refused to leave the constituency despite losing the election. The next five years saw Mr. Satheesan carefully nurturing his relationship with the voters of the constituency, who presented him with his first electoral victory in 2001. Mr. Satheesan never had to look back.A post-graduate in Law and Social Work, Mr. Satheesan learned the early lessons of social and political engineering under the tutelage of former Minister G. Karthikeyan, whom he reveres as his guide and philosopher and fondly called GK. Mr. Satheesan remembers that it was GK who bargained with the party leadership to field him as a candidate in Paravur Assembly Constituency.Mr. Satheesan was often seen as a loner at the party. However, he never shied away from speaking his mind. His candid approach won him more foes than friends in the organisation, which was then divided into two opposing camps, the ‘I’ faction led by former Chief Minister K. Karunakaran and the ‘A’ group, the loyalists of another former Chief Minister and Union Minister A.K. Antony. Though Mr. Satheesan was identified with the ‘I’ faction during his early years of political career, he quickly moved away from the factions to assert his independent identity.Pressure groupWhile being a junior Opposition legislator in the State Assembly, he joined hands with younger colleagues to form a pressure group, the Green MLAs, who espoused the cause of environmental protection. The youngsters highlighted several environmental concerns of the State, which caught the attention of Kerala, an environmentally sensitive State.The five years of his political life as the Leader of the Opposition saw the emergence of an aggressive leader, who confronted the CPI(M) on the floor of the House. Reinvigorating the battle-weary organisation and its disillusioned cadres following two back-to-back electoral defeats was no easy task. A few prominent leaders left the organisation for the BJP after declaring that the days of the party were numbered in the State.Several social groups, especially the minority communities, that once stood with the Congress had deserted the party. The United Democratic Front (UDF) was in shambles. The Kerala Congress (Mani), one of the founding members of the alliance, had shifted its allegiance to the LDF. Prominent Hindu social and caste organisations, the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) and the Nair Service Society (NSS), had publicly castigated him for his anti-communal stance.Yet, Mr. Satheesan never gave up.Losses and defeats never doused his fighting spirit. He was often heard making light of the losses he encountered in his early political life, including the president’s posts of the Kerala Students Union, the Indian Youth Congress and the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee. He watched from the sidelines the ascent of his juniors to the leadership roles in the organisation and the government.Though it was widely expected that Mr. Satheesan, who outsmarted many of his colleagues in the Opposition benches, would join the 2011 Oommen Chandy government, luck didn’t favour him.Inspired by his calls for public resistance against the reported wrong policies of the 2021 LDF government, the Congress workers stormed the streets, women and youth activists defied water cannons and baton charges, threw themselves in front of the cavalcade of the Chief Minister and the State Ministers and staged black flag protests during the last five years of the LDF government.Mr. Satheesan made good use of his tenure to bolster the electoral alliance with the tagline, Team UDF. The efforts proved useful at the most needed time, the selection of the Chief Minister, as all the front partners supported his claim. The political leader, who never refrained from publicly admonishing the erring party functionaries, also invested heavily in the young brigade of the party, which eventually saw at least 30 young leaders make their political debut in the 16th Legislative Assembly. The elections witnessed the Congress-led UDF winning 102 seats in the 140-member legislative Assembly and thus ending its political wilderness in the bipolar polity of the State. The party nearly tripled its strength in the house as its 63 candidates got elected.Ideological frameworkMr. Satheesan also provided an ideological framework to his fight against the Left parties by claiming that the Congress was the true leftist organisation as the Left reportedly watered down its policies.“We are the Nehruvian Left,” he once asserted. The move came at a time when the CPI(M) was facing increasing instances of organisational schisms. The canny politician in Mr. Satheesan extended his support to the rebels, which saw two CPI(M) rebel leaders from Kannur and a former Minister from Alappuzha district win their seats. Several Congress candidates emerged victorious in constituencies which were once considered the Left citadels.An avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction, Mr. Satheesan often found time for literary and political conversations. Mr. Satheesan steps into the organisational vacuum created by the deaths of popular Congress leaders such as Karunakaran and Oommen Chandy, and the retreat from active politics of A.K. Antony — leaders who had endeared themselves to the masses with ease. And he carved out a niche for himself in the faction-ridden State unit of the party without identifying himself with any group or creating a fan base for himself.