The Congress party on Thursday named VD Satheesan as the Chief Minister of Kerala. He was unanimously appointed as the new leader of the Congress Legislature Party in Kerala.

“It has been decided to appoint VD Satheesan as the leader of the CLP”, Congress leader Deepa Dasmunsi said at a press conference. Besides him, the two veterans in competition were the Congress Party's General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal and Ramesh Chennithala. 

Speaking to reporters in Delhi, Venugopal said that he will provide all support to Satheesan and the UDF government in the southern state. 

Satheesan's name was announced a day after Rahul Gandhi met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for around 40 minutes, following which the grand old party said that all deliberations and discussions by the high command are complete. 

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His name was decided after days of hectic parleys, even after party observers Ajay Maken and Mukul Wasnik met Congress MLAs and gathered their views. The Congress leadership also held discussions with the three main contenders for the post and KPCC president Sunny Joseph. 

In the recently-concluded elections, the Congress-led UDF won 102 seats out of the total 140 assembly seats. The Congress has 63 MLAs, the IUML has 22, the Kerala Congress has eight, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) has three. 

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Who is VD Satheesan?

Born to a Nair family in 1964 in Kochi, Satheesan completed his primary education from Panangad High School, undergraduate studies from Sacred Heart College, and post-graduation in Social Work from Rajagiri College of Social Sciences. 

Following this, he completed his LLB from Kerala Law Academy College and LLM from Government Law College in Thiruvananthapuram. Before joining politics, he practised law athte Kerala High Court for around 10 years. 

He served as the secretary for the National Students' Union. Satheesan also served as the chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi University Union from 1986-87. 

In his political debut in 1996, he lost to CPI's P Raju from the Paravur assembly seat. He was first elected to the Kerala assembly in 2001 when he was a practising advocate in the Kerala High Court. 

Five years later, in 2006, he won the election from the Paravur assembly against KM Dinakaran and has retained the seat since then. Satheesan served as the Leader of Opposition in the Kerala Assembly from 2021-26, succeeding Ramesh Chennithala. 

In the recently conducted polls, VD Satheesan won from Paravur with a margin of over 20,000 votes and a vote share of 49.2 per cent against CPI's ET Tyson and BJP's Valsala Prasanna Kumar. 

Published on: May 14, 2026 12:15 PM IST