Muraleedharan: Former PM ordered my father to resign

Son says factional feud was responsible for Karunakaran’s removal

Late Congress leader K. Karunakaran’s son K. Muraleedharan yesterday claimed that then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao “ditched” his father and then Kerala chief minister after the 1994 Isro espionage case.

“As far as I know, and what was told by him [Karunakaran], he was crestfallen by the way Rao [then Congress President] behaved in 1995. It was Rao who ditched him. [Congress leader] G. K. Moopanar called me on March 15, 1995, to tell my father to resign as chief minister as per Rao’s directive, which he did the next day,” Muraleedharan, a Congress legislator, told the media here.

“He [Karunakaran] told me that Rao was responsible [for his removal]. No one from Kerala had ever asked for Karunakaran’s removal. What happened in the Congress then was nothing but the usual factional feud,” the Congress leader said.

Muraleedharan also said that had someone from the Nehru-Gandhi family been at the helm either in the government or the party in 1995, Karunakaran would not have suffered the “humiliation”. Karunakaran passed away in December 2010.