PT John Appointed Vice Chairman Of All India Kisan Congress
September 13, 2025 – New Delhi: PT John, a foremost voice in the farmers movement in India and a veteran Congress leader, has been appointed as Vice Chairman of the All India Kisan Congress, with immediate effect. This elevation, which was announced by KC Venugopal, AICC General Secretary, after the Congress President has approved the appointment, recognises a veteran leader whose lifelong dedication to India’s agrarian communities, particularly in the South, has made him a formidable voice for farmers’ rights.
Hailing from Wayanad, Kerala, PT John, is a khadi-clad activist whose journey began in the turbulent hills of Bathery. A steadfast Congressman, he rose through the ranks as Kozhikode city president of the Kerala Students’ Union (KSU), state treasurer, Wayanad district president of the Youth Congress, and state vice-president, while also serving as secretary of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) in Kozhikode. His defiance was evident in 1996 when he contested as a rebel candidate from Bathery, protesting the Congress’s neglect of workers’ voices. Though suspended, he was reinstated, yet the party’s groupism sidelined him from significant roles. Undeterred, John remained committed, critiquing the Congress’s drift from its democratic roots while advocating for tribes, Dalits, and farmers.
By 2019, as president of an independent farmers’ association in Wayanad, John championed tribal and Dalit farmers’ struggles, focusing on land rights and debt relief. His leadership soared in 2020 as South India coordinator for the Rashtriya Kisan Maha Sangh (RKMS), where he fiercely opposed the Modi government’s farm laws, labelling them corporate handouts. A pivotal figure in the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), he galvanised the 2020-21 Delhi protests, travelling nationwide despite COVID. In February 2024, John joined SKM’s push for a legal Minimum Support Price (MSP), facing arrest during a Punjab Police crackdown on 19 March 2025 at Shambhu and Khanauri. Released after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin’s intervention, he condemned the arrests as an assault on dissent, vowing intensified protests.
In Wayanad, a farmer himself, John’s ingenuity shone through his 2024 “buzzing fence” initiative- beehive barriers inspired by Dr. Lucy King’s Save the Elephants – reducing human-wildlife conflicts by 80% while generating honey income. In July 2025, he rallied Karnataka’s Devanahalli farmers against land grabs for an Aerospace Park. Following the July 2024 Wayanad landslides, which claimed 250 lives, John, as Meppadi’s farmer leader, decried survivors’ loss of livelihoods and dignity.
