Vyalar Ravi 
Vyalar Ravi
By Sanjiv Acharya
Union Minister for Civil Aviation and Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi is one of the senior most Congress leaders from Kerala. He is the founder of the student union of Kerala which later became the NSUI, the student’s wing of the Congress party. And he has been a Congress Working Committee member since the late seventies and at present is one of the senior most CWC members. So it is quite natural that many of the Congress leaders who at present are holding important positions in the party are his one time juniors. And Ravi still lives in that old era and thinks that he does not to keep them in good humour because he is their senior. He doesn’t know that there is no rule of senior-junior in any political party. Whosoever gets an opportunity becomes important. The latest case is that of Nitin Gadkari in the BJP. He is junior to almost all those BJP leaders who have been in national politics for long, but since he is the party president, protocol says that all of them have to obey him and give him due respect. Vayalar Ravi, due to his close association with the all powerful Principal Secretary of the Prime Minister, TKA Nayar, got an opportunity to have the additional charge of the Civil Aviation Ministry when Praful Patel was shifted to the Ministry of Heavy Industries in the last Cabinet reshuffle. The buzz among the Congress leaders of AICC is that Vayalar Ravi doesn’t give a proper response to any party leaders of the organization. He is also said to be a very close friend of controversial hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal, who lives in America. It was Vayalar Ravi along with Subirami Reddy who on the direction of TKA Nayar had recommended Chatwal’s name for the Padma award. “Vayalar Ravi gets full support from the PMO, so why should he give importance to any ordinary Congressman?” complains an office bearer of the Kerala Congress committee. Sources say that nowadays a former CMD of Indian Airlines has become one of the main advisors of Vayalar Ravi since he became in charge of the Civil Aviation Ministry. Everybody knows the link between this former CMD and controversial corporate lobbyist Niira Radia. And again it is not a hidden fact that Niira Radia has deep interests in the Civil Aviation Ministry since Anant Kumar of the BJP was the Civil Aviation minister. And it is learnt that the publicity work of the Overseas Indian Affairs ministry’s publicity work was also assigned to a controversial company.