Kottayam: Besides Suresh Gopi, the actor-politician who opened the account for BJP in Kerala in the Lok Sabha polls, there is one more Malayali who has earned the call up to Delhi to join the third Modi government – George Kurian. The BJP state general secretary took oath as a Minister of State in the third Modi government at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Sunday evening.
Kurian, the BJP candidate in Puthupally in the 2016 assembly elections, has served as a member of the BJP national executive committee and was the national vice-president of the Yuva Morcha. He was also the district president of the party's Kottayam unit.
A law graduate, Kurian also has a degree in Hindi. He entered politics through Student Morcha. A member of the Minority Morcha, he became a member of the Minority Affairs Policy Formulation Committee in 2013. In 2017, he became the first from Kerala to be appointed the vice-chairman of the National Minorities Commission.
He has contested as a BJP candidate in Kottayam and Idukki parliamentary constituencies. In the new NDA government, the BJP is likely to hold onto the portfolios of home, finance, defence and external affairs. The allies are also less likely to give the education and culture departments, which are ideologically important to the saffron party.
