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Pinarayi Vijayan

Pinarayi Vijayan is the Chief Minister of Kerala since May 2016. He also holds the portfolio of Home Affairs in the state government. He has been a Member of the Politburo of Communist Party of India (Marxist) {CPI(M)} since March 2002.
 
Pinarayi Vijayan stepped into politics as a student union leader and has been with the CPI(M) since 1964. Vijayan was the Secretary of the Kerala State Committee of the CPI(M) from September 1998 to February 2015. He was the Minister of Electricity from May 1996 to October 1998 and the Minister of Co-operatives from May 1996 to October 1998 in the Kerala government. 
 
He was elected from the Dharmadom Assembly constituency of Kerala in 2016. He won elections from the Payyannur Assembly constituency in 1996 and from the Koothuparamba Assembly constituency in 1991, 1977 and 1970.
 
Vijayan has been referred to as "Trump in a dhoti" or "Modi in a moustache" by several quarters due to his style of functioning. He dealt with several issues as a CM in the past few years -- Cyclone Ockhi, the Nipah virus outbreak, the massive floods in 2018 and the Sabarimala conundrum. 
 
He has been critical of the Modi government and believes that the Bharatiya Janata Party will face a serious setback in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While he ruled out a tie-up with Congress for the 2019 polls, he said that the BJP coming to power again would "destroy the country". He has also said that he doubts the grand old party's resolve to fight communalism

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