Why former Kerala minister KK Shailaja rejected Magsaysay Award

Former Kerala minister KK Shailaja, who was the face of her state's fight against Covid-19 in the initial months, has declined to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2022 for public service.

The reason given by Shailaja was that she was not interested in receiving it in her individual capacity as she, being the health minister then, was only part of a collective fight against the pandemic.

But CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said it was because the award is in the name of Ramon Magsaysay who was accused of brutally oppressing Communists in the Philippines.


"...this award is in the name of Ramon Magsaysay who has the history of brutal oppression of the communists in the Philippines. So, for all these factors together, she politely refused it saying that she will be the first politician to get it," PTI quoted Yechury as saying.

Shailaja is a member of the Central committee of the CPI(M), and she took the decision after consulting the party's national leadership. She was quoted as saying she thanked them (trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund) and "politely refused" the award.

Former president Magsaysay was a staunch anti-Communist who oversaw the defeat of Communists (Hukbalahap, a Communist guerrilla movement formed by the farmers of Central Luzon) in the Philippines in the 1950s.

KK Shailaja, affectionately called Shailaja Teacher by people i her party and many outside, led from the front as Kerala first fought the Nipah virus and the coronavirus which causes Covid-19. She was widely credited for keeping Kerala's death rate lower than the national average in the initial months of the pandemic.

Shailaja was controversially left out of the cabinet when Left Democratic Front was voted in for a historic second term in 2021, the reason given being that all ministers other than CM Pinarayi Vijayan were being rotated.

Indians who have received the prestigious Magsaysay award include: filmmaker Satyajit Ray, R K Laxman, former election commissioner T N Sheshan, singer M S Subbulakshmi, scientist M S Swaminathan, former Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.