People's Democracy

CPI(M)’s New State Secretary In Karnataka

MEETING at Bangalore on July 13, the Karnataka state committee of the Communist party of India (Marxist) elected G N Nagaraj as its secretary. His name was proposed by V J K Nair and seconded by K R Sriyan; both of them are members of the state secretariat of the party. K R Sriyan presided over the meeting.

The meeting condoled the demise of Comrade S Suryanarayana Rao, who was the party’s state secretary, and paid him rich tributes.

The CPI(M)’s Polit Bureau member S Ramachandran Pillai as well as Central Committee members M A Baby and K Varadharajan were present during the meeting and guided its deliberations.

Popularly known as GN, the CPI(M)’s new state secretary Gulur Narasaiah Nagaraj received his Master’s degree from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, in 1973. He joined government service as assistant agriculture officer soon after completing his MSc in 1973 and was elevated as assistant director and then as deputy director of agriculture. GN was trained at Matupatti and Munar in Idukki district under an Indo-Swiss project.

While he was working as an officer at Naragund in Dharwar district in 1978, there was a militant peasant movement against the imposition of a betterment tax, hikes in the prices of agricultural inputs and crash in the prices of agricultural produce. Though an officer at the time, GN was associated with the movement. The then Gundu Rao-led Congress government unleashed brutal attacks on the peasants so as to crush their upsurge.

While in service, GN joined the CPI(M) in 1980. But having seeing the brutality of state machinery against the peasants in 1983, he decided to resign his job and work as a party wholetimer.

He worked as secretary of the party’s legislature wing and later on the kisan front. He was then co-opted to the Kisan Sabha state committee. He also worked as editor of the party’s weekly organ Aikyaranga. He was elected to the party’s state committee in 1988 and later to its state secretariat. He is currently working as president of the Karnataka state unit of All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU). (INN)