IANS THIRUVANANTHAPURAM KERALA assembly on Wednesday felicitated K J Yesudas in connection with the golden jubilee of his singing career at the assembly complex in Thiruvananthapuram.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy inaugurated the function and presented a plaque while Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan offered ponnada to Yesudas, who left a record contribution of more than 50,000 film songs in various Indian languages including his mother tongue Malayalam during his 50- years of singing career.

Speaker G Karthikeyan read out the citation at the function which was attended by ministers, MLAs and other prominent personalities.

Yesudas, 71, sang his first film song on November 14, 1961 by rendering four lines from a verse of saint-reformer Sreenarayana Guru.

Since then rose to become one of the most-heard singers of India whose mellifluous voice made hundreds of lyrics ever-haunting. Besides Malayalam, he has sung in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Odiya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tulu and foreign languages like Malay, Russian, Arabic, Latin, and English.

He has bagged seven national award for the best male playback singer and 43 state awards for the best playback singer in various languages like Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Bengali.

Son of Augustine Joseph, stage actor and musician of his time, Yesudas joined the RLV Music Academy in Ernakulam and later graduated from Sri Swathi Tirunal Music Collge.

A passionate of south Indian classical music, he honed his skill as disciple of legendary Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar and Vechur Hari Hara Subramania Aiyer.