It was a wicked sense of humour that V S Achuthanandan possessed. There was in him a near sadistic instinct to motivate political opponents into embarrassing themselves, especially in their weakest moments. This he did, not by being his usual stern self, but with a smile.

No less a person than K Karunakaran was fooled by this sly smile. It was 2003, and A K Antony was Chief Minister. K Karunakaran, who just couldn't forgive Antony for the way the A group exploited the ISRO espionage case to unseat him as chief minister in 1995, never wasted a chance to mock the Congress government.

Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan egged Karunakaran on. At a press conference in Kochi on September 15, 2003, Achuthanandan, sounding sympathetic, said: "For a long time, the Congress has been causing Karunakaran great pain. Whatever truth Karunakaran says, the LDF will support him."

The next line was a political bombshell. "The palmolein case will not come in the way of our cooperation with him," he said. Top CPM leaders had then made frantic calls to newspaper offices just to make sure that Achuthanandan was not misquoted. It was unbelievable even for them that Achuthanandan had set aside the palmolein scandal and endorsed Karunakaran.

If it was confirmation they were looking for, the CPM leaders only had to wait three more days. On September 19, at the Ernakulam Guest House, Achuthanandan repeated himself. "There is nothing wrong in the Left parties cooperating with our long-time foe Karunakaran," he said.

And then, nearly a week later on September 25, he told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram that Karunakaran and the Left had come to occupy the same spot when it comes to Antony's anti-people policies. "That is why both Karunakaran and I say that it is better to let the palmolein case take its own course," he said.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the palmolein import scam was published in 1993 when Achuthanandan was the opposition leader. Achuthanandan's attack was so vicious that there were days when Karunakaran kept away from the Assembly.

The case was that the Karunakaran ministry had imported 15,000 tonnes of palmolein from a Malaysian company without inviting tenders and at a cost higher than the market price. One of the first decisions of the E K Nayanar government that came to power in 1996 was to order a Vigilance enquiry against Karunakaran.

After all this for Achuthanandan to become so considerate of Karunakaran came as a surprise. That Achuthanandan's sole objective was to encourage Karunakaran to keep undermining the Antony government was lost on everyone, notably the then CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.

On September 30, Pinarayi called a press conference in Delhi and urged Karunakaran to leave the Congress. This was when Achuthanandan realised that his mischievous ploy to play one weakened foe (Karunakaran) against another powerful adversary (Antony government) was seen by his party as a signal to rope Karunakaran into the Left fold. His game was to destroy both but Pinarayi saw in this a licence to rehabilitate one of them.

Pinarayi's project was to pull down the Antony government and, in its place, prop up a Karunakaran government.

The smile that was actually a taunt dried up and VS assumed his true form. The very next day, on October 1, Achuthanandan said no decision had been taken on supporting a Karunakaran government. Then, on October 24, he made it politically difficult for Pinarayi to go ahead with his project.

"If at all the CPM were to back a Karunakaran government, it will be done only after assessing that government's connections with communal parties and its policies. (Then, there was speculation that Karunakaran had the support of the Muslim League). One of the biggest charges against the Antony government is that it had caused deep communal divisions in the state by joining forces with communal forces. If it is the same alliance that would be formed under Karunakaran, it would be meaningless to back them," he said at a camp organised by the Kerala University Union.

By then Pinarayi had already held discussions with Karunakaran and his son, K Muraleedharan. It was said that 34 ruling party MLAs were on Karunakaran's side.

Pinarayi was unwilling to back out at this stage. On November 3, at the Ernakulam Lenin Centre, Pinarayi hinted that the fall of Antony was imminent. "I cannot specify a date but the Antony government would soon fall and an alternative government would be in place. This might happen even in a matter of hours," Pinarayi said.

The very next day, Achuthanandan hit back. "We will not support anyone worse than Antony," he said. All talk of a Karunakaran government evaporated.

It was a year later, just before the 2005 local body elections, talks about an alliance with Karunakaran's party resurfaced; Karunakaran had by then left the Congress and formed Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran). This, too, was thwarted by Achuthanandan. "The LDF is not open to everyone opposing Oommen Chandy," he said.

The CPM was forced to abandon a political alliance with Karunakaran and limit the cooperation to "local-level understanding" in certain local bodies.

It is not clear whether the Pinarayi faction wanted to scale up the "local-level understanding" with Karunakaran into a full-fledged alliance at a later date. But the ever alert Achuthanandan made sure that even if the official faction still nursed such a desire, it will not dare to make such a move.

On September 10, after the local body polls that year, Achuthanandan gave a clear hint that his earlier palmolein comment was just a prank he played on Karunakaran. "Whatever happens, there will be no change in my stand against Karunakaran in the palmolein case and R Balakrishna Pillai in the Idamalayar case," he said.

Karunakaran and his son eventually had to return to the Congress.