Kerala: Veteran RSS Pracharak and former BJP Organising Secretary PP Mukundan is no more

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Pracharak and former BJP Organising Secretary PP Mukundan joined Sangh as a balaswayamsevak when he was hardly 13. After completing his school studies, he came out as a ‘Pracharak’. He served as Zilla Pracharak, Vibhag Pracharak and Kerala Pranth Sampark Pramukh. Later on, he was assigned to BJP and he served as state organising secretary of the party for a decade and then as an organising secretary of southern zone consisting of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. By 2007 he retired from public work due to bad health. Still, he continued as the patriarch for the BJP leaders and workers in Kerala. He was in jail under MISA, during the dark days of Emergency, for 21 months.

Throughout his organisational career, he showed his unparalleled skills in organisational matters and public relations. Even the people belonging to different political parties and different schools of thought respected him and affectionately called him Mukundettan. Ettan means elder brother in Malayalam. Kerala has seen even chief ministers calling him Mukundettan.

He had done excellent job as the Managing Director of Janmabhumi Malayalam daily during the crucial years of financial crisis and other problems. He had excellent rapport with the people and leaders in the state cutting across party and religious lines. He had done exemplary job in organising Dr Muralimanohar Joshiji’s Kanyakumari-  Jammu yathra in 1991. Narendra Modiji was the man-in-charge of the yatra. When Mukkundettan was the Kerala state organising secretary of BJP, Modiji was the Gujarat Organising secretary. Later on Mukundettan was a national executive member of BJP when Modiji was the national organising secretary. Both had maintained wonderful personal rapport in between.

When he was holding Sangh responsibility, he had shouldered enviable jobs in organising massive Sarsanghchalak programmes in the state. He was very much efficient in the skill of grooming young workers and developing them to hold top organisational responsibilities. The present state leaders of BJP and several Sangh workers were developed like this. He was a household name in the Sangh and BJP families in the state.