Shri.P K Raghavan
Former Kerala Minister and CPI leader

P K Raghavan, a prominent Dalit leader, a keen trade unionist, he played a major role in organising farm workers in the central Travancore region. And was SC/ST Development and Housing Minister during 1970-’71 and SC/ST Development and Registration Minister during 1987-’91. P K Raghavan was serving as member of the CPI State council. Raghavan began his political career as a student activist and later became a prominent organisation of farm workers in the area. A member of the Communist Party since 1953, he rose to become a member of the CPI State secretariat. He had undergone imprisonment for his role in the transport strike in 1955 and the food stirike in 1960.

As a leader of farm workers, he had functioned as State general secretary of the Kerala State Karshaka Thozhilali Federation and the national secretary of the Bhartiya Khet Mazdoor Union (BKMU). At the time of his death (August 19, 2005), he was State president of the Karshaka Thozhilali Federation. He was also the leader of the AITUC-affiliated cashew workers’ union, Bharatiya Khet Workers’ Union, SC-ST Joint Council chairman and president of the Kerala Pulayar Mahasabha. He was first elected to the Assembly in 1967 from Pathanapuram and was returned to the House in 1970 from the same constituency and from Vaikom in 1987.

He had stepped down as a Minister in the 1971 Achutha Menon Cabinet along with N.E. Balaram and P.S. Sreenivasan to enable M.N. Govindan Nair and T.V. Thomas to become Ministers. As SC/ST Development Minister, he had played a leading role in the establishment of Ambedkar Villages and residential schools for Dalits in the State. A poet, he had also published collection of poems.

P K Raghavan born at Sooranad, which was a hotbed of leftist politics and powerful struggles against feudal landlords, and settled at Bharanikavu. Raghavan plunged into politics in his student days. He enrolled as a member of the Communist Party in 1953.