Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader P.P. Mukundan, 77, widely reckoned as the architect of an arguably covert and purported anti-communist electoral alliance with the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in Kerala in the 1990s, passed away at a private hospital in Kochi on Wednesday. Doctors attributed the cause of his death to a respiratory illness.
Mr. Mukundan, a bachelor, cut his political teeth as a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist in the Kannur district in the early 1980s.
The restive period saw a spurt in tit-for-tat violence between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and RSS cadres in the viscerally politicised North Kerala region.