Former Union minister K P Unnikrishnan passes away at 89 in Kerala

Kozhikode: Senior Congress member K P Unnikrishnan, 89, known for his rare blend of ideological conviction and intellectual rigour, died at a private hospital early on Tuesday. Unnikrishnan, who had been undergoing treatment for age-related ailments, is survived by his wife Amritha and daughters Sudhakshina and Niranjana.

The funeral will be held in Kozhikode on Wednesday.The MP, who represented the Vadakara constituency six consecutive times from 1971 to 1996 - a record in Kerala for the longest tenure - left behind a political career as one of Parliament's most articulate and combative opposition voices. Unnikrishnan served as minister for telecommunications, shipping and surface transport in the V P Singh ministry during 1989-90.

He oversaw the mass repatriation of 1.5 lakh Indians from war-torn Kuwait during the 1990 Gulf War.A journalist-turned-politician, he joined Congress in 1960 and became a member of AICC in Mumbai (then Bombay), where he had worked as a reporter for the weekly tabloid Blitz, in 1962.He became an Indira Gandhi loyalist in the early 60s and was first elected to Lok Sabha from Vadakara in 1971 and again in 1977.He broke ranks with Congress after the Emergency amid differences with Sanjay Gandhi, resigned from the party in 1978 and won Lok Sabha elections as a member of Congress (U) and Congress (S) in 1980, 1984, 1989 and 1991 as a LDF-backed candidate.In the 1984 Lok Sabha polls, after PM Indira Gandhi's assassination, he was one of the three LDF candidates in Kerala to overcome the sympathy wave. During the Bofors scandal, he emerged as an uncompromising critic of the Congress govt.