Veteran Communist Marxist Party leader and former minister MV Raghavan, a key figure in Kerala politics for long, died here on Sunday, according to his family. Raghavan (81) was keeping indifferent health for quite some time, they said.
Once a firebrand CPI(M) leader, Raghavan quit the party and floated the CMP following differences with the leadership in the mid-1980s.
Since then he had been with the Congress-led UDF and became a minister twice, handling the cooperation portfolio. Recently, a faction in the CMP pulled out of the UDF and moved closer to the LDF. Raghavan had been bed-ridden for the last two years due to various ailments.