Pinarayi Vijayan is an Indian politician who is currently the Chief Minister of Kerala serving since 2016. A member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India, he is the longest-serving secretary of the Kerala State Committee of the CPI(M). He also served in the government of Kerala as Minister of Electric Power and Co-operatives from 1996 to 1998. Vijayan won a seat in the May 2016 Kerala Legislative Assembly election as the CPI(M) candidate from the Dharmadom constituency and was elected as the leader of the Left Democratic Front and became the 12th Chief Minister of Kerala. In 2022, he became the longest-continuous serving Chief Minister of Kerala.

He entered politics through student union activities in college. He eventually joined the Communist Party of India in 1964. He became the Kannur district secretary of the Kerala Students Federation which later became the Students Federation of India. He went on to become the state secretary and then the state president of KSF. He then moved on to the Kerala State Youth Federation of India. He became the president of the State Committee. Later, he was elected as the president of the Kerala State Cooperative Bank. He became the Kannur district secretary of the CPI(M). At the age of 25, in the 1970 assembly election Vijayan contested from Kuthuparamba and won the seat making him Kerala’s youngest legislator.

In 1998, he became the state secretary of the CPI(M). He was elected to the Politburo of the CPI(M). He assumed as state secretary of CPI(M) for 18 years. He led the party to a landslide victory in the 2004 Indian General Election, 2006 Kerala assembly election, 2014 Indian general election, and 2016 Kerala assembly election.