Rajya Sabha member and Loktantrik Janata Dal leader M. P. Veerendra Kumar passed away at a private hospital on Thursday after a cardiac arrest, Asianet News reported.
Veerendra Kumar, who was a member of the 14th Lok Sabha is the president of the LJD Kerala state unit.
He is also the chairman and managing director of the Malayalam daily newspaper Mathrubhumi.
Veerendra Kumar had more than 10 books and he won Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award in 2010 for Haimavatha bhoov.
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, and after schooling in Kalpetta and at Kozhikode, he did his master’s in philosophy from Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College, Madras.
An active politician, he was the treasurer and national committee member of the former Samyukta Socialist Party, state secretary of the Kerala Unit of the Socialist Party, one of the all India secretaries of the former Socialist Party, convener of the Opposition Co-ordination Committee in Kerala, vice president of the former Janata Party, and its president.
Veerendra Kumar was arrested during the emergency. During 1987–91 he was elected member of the Kerala Legislative Assembly. Later 1996 he was elected to the Lok Sabha, from Kozhikode constituency and functioned as Minister of state for Labour and later Finance.
