V. S. Chandralekha | |
---|---|
State President, Janata Party Tamil Nadu | |
In office 1992–2013 | |
State President,Virat Hindustan Sangam Tamil Nadu | |
Assumed office 2015 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Dindigul,Madras Presidency,British India (now in Tamil Nadu,India) | 14 August 1947
Political party | Janata Party |
Children | Abhijit Iyer-Mitra [1] |
V. S. Chandralekha (born 14 August 1947) is an Indian politician and former civil servant,who was the President of the Tamil Nadu state unit of the Janata Party,which merged into the Bharatiya Janata Party on 11 August 2013. M. G. Ramachandran had appointed her as probably the state's second woman collector,after Anna Rajam Malhotra of the 1951 batch. The latter was the first female IAS Officer and Collector in the country. [2]
Chandralekha was born on 14 August 1947 at Dindigul in the then Madras Presidency. She had her education in Madras and mastered in economics from Presidency College,Madras before joining the Indian Administrative Service.
Chandralekha joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1971 and served as the Sub-Collector of Chengalpattu and Cheranmahadevi from 1973 to 1975 and as General Manager,Civil Supplies Corporation &Deputy Secretary,Food from 1976 to 1980. From 1980 to 1985,she served as District Collector,first,of South Arcot and then,Madurai. She served as the Director of Rural Development,Tamil Nadu from 1985 to 1988,Chairman of Women's Development Corporation,Tamil Nadu from 1988 to 1990 and Chairman &Managing Director of Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation from 1991 to 1992. She resigned from the civil service in 1992.
During her stint as the MD of TIDCO,she opposed the divestment policies of the then Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa due to which Chandralekha faced acid attack at Egmore,Chennai in 1992. [3] [4]
Chandralekha joined the Janata Party in 1992 after the acid attack. She served as the President of the party's Tamil Nadu unit from 1992. In 1996,she stood against Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's M. K. Stalin for the post of Mayor of the Chennai Corporation,but lost. [5] She participated in the 2006 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections as the candidate from Mylapore constituency and came fifth,garnering only 2,897 votes. She is a close aide of Subramanian Swamy. [6] She is now Tamil Nadu state president of Virat Hindustan Sangam (VHS),an organisation floated by Subramanian Swamy in 2015. [7] [8]
Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran , also popularly known by his acronym M.G.R., was an Indian actor, politician, and philanthropist who served as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu from 1977 until his death in 1987. He was the founder and first general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. On 19 March 1988, M.G.R. was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour.
Presidency College is an art, commerce, and science college in the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India. On 16 October 1840, this school was established as the Madras Preparatory School before being repurposed as a high school, and then a graduate college. The Presidency College is one of the oldest government arts colleges in India. It is one of two Presidency Colleges established by the British in India, the other being the Presidency College, Kolkata.
Pattali Makkal Katchi is a political party in Tamil Nadu, India, founded by S. Ramadoss in 1989 for the Vanniyar caste in northern Tamil Nadu. It is a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). It contests the elections with the "Ripe Mango" symbol.
Tirunellai Narayana Iyer Seshan was an Indian civil servant and bureaucrat who served with the Indian Administrative Service. After serving in various positions in Madras and in various ministries of the Central Government, he served as the 18th Cabinet Secretary of India in 1989. He was appointed the 10th Chief Election Commissioner of India (1990–96) and became known for his electoral reforms. He won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service in 1996.
Subramanian Swamy is an Indian politician, economist and statistician. Before joining politics, he was a professor of Mathematical Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is known for his Hindu nationalist views. Swamy was a member of the Planning Commission of India and was a Cabinet Minister in the Chandra Shekhar government. Between 1994 and 1996, Swamy was Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade under former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. Swamy was a long-time member of the Janata Party, serving as its president until 2013 when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has written on foreign affairs of India dealing largely with China, Pakistan and Israel. He was nominated to Rajya Sabha on 26 April 2016 for a six-year term, ending on 24 April 2022.
Subburaman Thirunavukkarasar is an Indian politician. He was the State President of Tamil Nadu Congress Committee till 2 February 2019 and former secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) of the Indian National Congress (INC) party. His introduction to politics in 1977 was facilitated by former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M. G. Ramachandran. Ramachandran founded the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in 1972 and was facing his first elections for the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election in 1977. He identified Thirunavukkarasar, a lawyer by profession, to contest the Aranthangi assembly constituency. Thirunavukkarasar won the seat, aged 27, and was elected as the Deputy Speaker of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly. He continued in that capacity till 1980. Subsequently, he served as Tamil Nadu state minister from 1980 to 1987 in the MGR cabinet, holding portfolios that included Industries, Housing Board, Excise and Handlooms. Later, he became a member of the Lok Sabha – the lower house of the Parliament of India – when he won the erstwhile Pudukottai Lok Sabha constituency. He served as Union Minister of state for shipping and later for telecommunications and information technology.
Dravidian parties include an array of regional political parties in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, which trace their origins and ideologies either directly or indirectly to the Justice Party and the Dravidian movement of C. Natesanar and Periyar E. V. Ramasamy. The Dravidian movement was based on the linguistic divide in India, where most of the Northern Indian, Eastern Indian and Western Indian languages are classified as Indo-Aryan, whereas the South Indian languages are classified as Dravidian. Dravidian politics has developed by associating itself to the Dravidian community. The original goal of Dravidian politics was to achieve social equality, but it later championed the cause of ending the domination of North India over the politics and economy of the South Indian province known as Madras Presidency.
P. Kakkan or fondly known as Kakkan, was an Indian politician and freedom fighter who served as a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, Member of Parliament, President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee and in various ministerial posts in Congress governments in the erstwhile Madras state between 1957 and 1967.
The twelfth legislative assembly election of Tamil Nadu was held on 10 May 2001. All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)-led front won the elections and its general secretary, J. Jayalalithaa was sworn in as Chief Minister, even though she could not legally run as MLA in this election. She was unanimously nominated as Chief Minister by her party and was ready to serve her second term. But due to criminal and corruption charges from her first term, on 21 September 2001, a five-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of India ruled in a unanimous verdict that "a person who is convicted for a criminal offense and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years cannot be appointed the Chief Minister of a State under Article 164 (1) read with (4) and cannot continue to function as such". Thereby, the bench decided that "in the appointment of Dr. J. Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister there has been a clear infringement of a Constitutional provision and that a writ of quo warranto must issue". In effect, her appointment as Chief Minister was declared null and invalid with retrospective effect. Therefore, technically, she was not the Chief Minister in the period between 14 May 2001 and 21 September 2001. After her resignation on 21 September 2001, she put in O. Panneerselvam, as the official 13th Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, until she could clear up the charges from her first term, so she can take up the mantle of Chief Minister officially, on 2 March 2002.
The eleventh legislative assembly election of Tamil Nadu was held on 2 May 1996. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led front won the election and its leader M. Karunanidhi, became the chief minister. This was his fourth term in office. S. Balakrishnan, also known as So. Balakrishnan, of Tamil Maanila Congress, became the Leader of the Opposition. The incumbent All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government was defeated in a landslide with its general secretary and outgoing chief minister J. Jayalalithaa losing the election from the Bargur constituency. She became the first Incumbent Chief Minister since M. Bakthavatsalam in 1967 to lose her own constituency.
The tenth legislative assembly election of Tamil Nadu was held on 24 June 1991. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) – Indian National Congress (INC) alliance won the elections in a landslide and AIADMK general secretary J. Jayalalithaa became the chief minister. This was her first term in office. The united strength of AIADMK, the alliance with the Congress, and the wave of public sympathy in the wake of Rajiv Gandhi assassination combined to produce a massive victory for the AIADMK. The DMK could only win 2 seats. This was the worst performance of the DMK since it entered electoral politics in the 1957.
The ninth legislative assembly election of Tamil Nadu was held on 21 January 1989. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) won the election and its leader M. Karunanidhi, became the Chief Minister. It was his third term in office. The DMK was in power only for a short term, as it was dismissed on 31 January 1991 by the Indian Prime minister Chandra Shekhar using Article 356 (Otherwise) of the Indian Constitution.
Madras Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan Ravi is an Indian actor and politician who played supporting roles throughout his career. He is the son of actor M. R. Radha and the uncle of Vasu Vikram and half-brother of Raadhika. He is a former chief member of the Tamil Nadu Film Artistes' Association. He is known for his roles as antagonists in Tamil films and a he acted in the serial Chellamae. He is also known for his controversial criticism of other film personalities.
Jayaram Jayalalithaa was an Indian politician and actress who served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for more than fourteen years over six terms between 1991 and 2016. From 9 February 1989 to 5 December 2016, she was the 5th and longest-serving general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a Dravidian party whose cadre revered her as their "Amma" (Mother) and "Puratchi Thalaivi".
Vivekanandan Krishnaveni Sasikala, also known by her married name Sasikala Natarajan, and often referred to by her initials VKS, is an Indian politician. She was a close associate of J. Jayalalithaa, the late chief minister of Tamil Nadu, who headed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) from 1989 until her death in 2016. After Jayalalithaa's death, the party's general council elected her as a temporary secretary general of AIADMK. Before entering the Central Prison in Bangalore, Sasikala appointed Edappadi K. Palanisamy as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Palanisamy and other ministers removed her from the post and expelled her from the party in September 2017. Her dismissal was upheld in April 2022.
Jayaram Jayalalithaa, commonly referred to as Jayalalithaa, was an Indian politician who was the six time Chief Minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She was initially convicted for misusing her office during her tenure of 1991–96. Subramanian Swamy was the chief petitioner. Some of the allegations involved spending on her foster son's lavish marriage in 1996 and her acquisition of properties worth more than ₹66.65 crore, as well as jewellery, cash deposits, investments and a fleet of luxury cars. This was the first case where a ruling chief minister had to step down on account of a court sentence. Ultimately, in May 2015, her conviction was overturned, she was acquitted of all charges, and she then died before the Supreme Court of India reviewed the case in 2017.
TANSI land acquisition case was a sensational case against J. Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, during 1991-96. Jaya Publication and Sasi Enterprises, the companies in which J. Jayalalithaa and her aide V. K. Sasikala had holdings, purchased lands of Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation (TANSI), a state government agency, in 1992. The case was filed by Subramanian Swamy and chargesheet were filed during the following DMK government headed by M. Karunanidhi in 1996. Jayalalitha and her aide, Sasikala were convicted in the lower court, which sentenced her to two year rigorous imprisonment and fined ₹50,000 on 9 October 2000. The case had political implications as Jayalalithaa was disqualified from contesting the 2001 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election. Though Jayalalithaa's nomination papers were rejected, she took oath as chief minister after the victory of AIADMK in the elections. The Supreme Court disqualified her in September 2001, resulting in her stepping down and elevation of O. Panneerselvam as the chief minister. The governor of Tamil Nadu, Fathima Beevi, who administered oath to J. Jayalalithaa, was advised to step down by the union ministry, who also sent the report to the President of India.
Deepa Jayakumar, also known as J. Deepa, is a former politician and journalist.
V. Vasanthi Devi is an Indian educationist and acclaimed academic. She is the president of the Association for India's Development and a trustee of the Madras Institute of Development Studies. Devi served as the vice-chancellor of the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University between 1992–1998 and as the chairperson of the State Commission for Women in Tamil Nadu between 2002 and 2005.
The Virat Hindustan Sangam is an Indian right-wing cultural organisation. It was founded by Subramanian Swamy on 8 April 2015. Its stated objective is "to pave way for a Hindu Renaissance based on the concepts of Sanatana Dharma". It was established to push issues like building Ram Mandir, scrapping Article 370 and bringing Uniform Civil Code.