E. Balanandan (1924 – 2009)

E. Balanandan (16 June 1924 – 19 January 2009) was a veteran trade union leader, stalwart of the working class movement of the country and former President of CITU.

Born in a working class family, E. Balanandan had to fight poverty in his childhood. He started his working life at a very early age and almost simultaneously took interest in taking up the workers’ issues and started organising them. In the early 1940s he worked in a steel erection unit in Aluva Industrial centre at Kerala and later joined as an electrician in General Electric Company. He took the initiative to organise the workers in the entire industrial area. He was victimized and dismissed several times due to his trade union activities and for leading working class struggles. He also played an important role in the famous Punnapara Vayalar struggle.

He became a whole-timer of the working class movement at a very young age and took up the task of organising the working class in the state and mobilising it in the anti-British struggle. Soon he was elected as the district secretary of AITUC and played a crucial role in leading the workers’ struggle in various industrial units like steel, aluminium, pottery, textile, electricity, heavy engineering as well as in the traditional sector like cashew, coir, toddy-tapping, plantation, weaving etc.

E. Balanandan was among the founder leaders of the CITU and a member of its secretariat since its inception. He was the President of CITU from 1990 to 2002. His commitment to the revolutionary ideology and class struggle and his pioneering role in initiating countrywide united struggle against the policies of neoliberal imperialist globalisation throughout the 1990s and thereafter, will ever be remembered. He always took pride in identifying himself as a worker.

E. Balanandan also earned distinction in championing the cause of toiling people in legislative forums including Parliament. He was a member of the Kerala Assembly from 1967 to 1969 and 1970 to 1976. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980 and also served as a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1988-2000.

He joined the Communist Party in 1943 and played an important role in the communist movement of the country, particularly in Kerala. He was elected as a central committee member of the CPI (M) in 1972 and member of its Polit Bureau from 1978 till he was relieved in 2005 due to ill health.