Kozhikode, Nov 12 (IANS): Kerala's former Fisheries and Rural Development Minister and Congress leader M.T. Padma breathed her last in Mumbai on Tuesday, said party sources. She was 81.
Her body will be brought to her home town here for the last rites that will take place on Wednesday.
A post-graduate in law, Padma rose from the ranks and was a close aide to veteran Congress legend K. Karunakaran.
It was in Karunakaran’s cabinet in 1991 that Padma was made a minister.
Padma started her political career through the student wing of the Congress and grew up in stature and occupied important party posts in Kozhikode. She was also the General Secretary of the Congress women’s wing and later was inducted into the state party unit.
Padma represented the Koilandy Assembly seat in the eighth and ninth Kerala Assemblies from 1987 to 1996. Since then though she was fielded in two successive Lok Sabha polls, first from Palakkad in 1999 and then from Vadakara in 2004, but failed to win.
Following this, she left the Congress to join ranks with her mentor Karunakaran who had floated the Democratic Indira Congress in 2006. Later when Karunakaran returned to the Congress, she also came back and contested the Kozhikode City Corporation elections, aiming to be the Mayor, but though she won her seat, it was the CPI-M which won the majority.
She was ailing for a while and was staying with her daughter who resides in Mumbai, where she breathed her last. Of late she was suffering from age-related illnesses.
The Congress' Kozhikode district unit is making all arrangements for giving her a fitting goodbye.