Kozhikode: Member of Parliament and Mathrubhumi Managing Director M.P. Veerendra Kumar passed away at 83. He breathed his last on Thursday night at a private hospital in Kozhikode suffering from a cardiac arrest.
Presently, a Rajya Sabha member, he was a union Minister and also a state minister. The last rites will be held on Friday in Wayanad, his hometown.
He is survived by wife Usha, children Asha, Nisha, Jayalakshmi and M. V. Shreyams Kumar (Joint Managing Director of Mathrubhumi).
Kumar was born to Marudevi Avva and Padmaprabha Gowder, a leader of Socialist Party and former MLA, on 22 July 1936 in a popular Jain family in Kalpetta. After schooling in Kalpetta and at Kozhikode, he did his master’s in philosophy from Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College, Madras.
He was invited to join the Socialist Party by Jayprakash Narayan and had been an all-India treasurer of the Samyukta Socialist Party between 1968 and 1970, state secretary of the Kerala Unit of the Socialist Party,convener of the Opposition Co-ordination Committee in Kerala.
Later, he became part of the Janata Party and the Janata Dal factions and recently, founded his own break-away unit, Lok Tantrik Janata Dal (LJD).
