Andimuthu Raja (born Sathyaseelan; 26 October 1963) is an Indian politician from Tamil Nadu, who serves as Member of Parliament for the Nilgiris constituency and deputy general secretary for the

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; DMK) is a political party based in the state of Tamil Nadu where it is currently the ruling party having a comfortable majority without coalition support and the union territory of Puducherry where it is curre ...

. He was a member of the

15th Lok Sabha Members of the 15th Lok Sabha were elected during the 2009 general election in India. It was dissolved on 18 May 2014 by President Pranab Mukherjee. Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance won 44 more seats than the previou ...

representing the

Nilgiris The Nilgiri Mountains form part of the Western Ghats in northwestern Tamil Nadu, Southern Karnataka, and eastern Kerala in India. They are located at the trijunction of three states and connect the Western Ghats with the Eastern Ghats. At le ...

constituency of Tamil Nadu and had been elected to house four times since 1996. Raja is an advocate by profession and he did his masters from Government Law College in Tiruchirappalli. Raja was first elected to Parliament as a member of

Lok Sabha The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-p ...

in 1996 from the Perambalur constituency and was reelected from the same constituency in 1999 and 2004 elections and from Nilgiris constituency in 2009. He was Minister of State for Rural development from 1996 to 2000, Minister of State, Health and Family Welfare from September 2000 to May 2004 and a cabinet minister for Environment and Forests from May 2004 to May 2007. He became the cabinet minister for Communication and Information Technology from May 2007, following the resignation of Dayanidhi Maran. Raja was investigated in the 2G Spectrum case, along with two other members of the DMK, Dayanidhi Maran and Kanimozhi. All three were acquitted in 2017. Raja was re-elected as Nilgiris MP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and was elected Deputy General Secretary of the DMK in September 2020.

Early life

Raja was born to S.K.Aandimuthu and Chinnapillai Ammal Andimadam of the day

Perambalur District Perambalur is one of the 38 districts (an administrative district) in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. The district headquarters is located at Perambalur. The district occupies an area of 1,752 km² and had a population of 565,223 with a se ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

. His grandparents, who belong to a

Dalit Dalit (from sa, दलित, dalita meaning "broken/scattered"), also previously known as untouchable, is the lowest stratum of the castes in India. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming ...

community, went from Velur in Perambalur district to Sri Lanka to work on the tea estates. They returned to India in the 1950s, and Raja's father returned in 1961. In high school in Perambalur, Raja was first introduced to

Periyar Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (17 September 1879 – 24 December 1973), revered as Periyar or Thanthai Periyar, was an Indian social activist and politician who started the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidar Kazhagam. He is known as the ' ...

and

Dravidar Kazhagam Dravidar Kazhagam is a social movement founded by Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, also called Thanthai Periyar. Its original goals were to eradicate the ills of the existing caste system including untouchability and on a grander scale to obtain a " ...

. He quickly became interested in the atheistic, rationalistic Dravidian ideology, along with those of Ambedkar and

Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

. He did his B.Sc. in Mathematics from the Government Arts College in Musiri, but was disinterested in the subject, and was drawn to politics and writing instead. He completed his graduation in law from the Government Law College in Madurai and his masters from Government Law College Tiruchirapalli. He was married to M. A. Parameswari and the couple have a daughter named Mayuri. Parameswari died of cancer on 29 May 2021.She was aged 54.

Political career

Raja started his political career in his final year of undergraduate, when he joined DMK students wing, and quickly rose through party ranks. When Vaiko was expelled from DMK, Raja was recommended by Rajya Sabha MP S Siva Subramaniam and KN Nehru for the DMK's candidature in Perambalur for 1996 Lok Sabha elections. He won, and entered Parliament.

Elections contested

Positions held

* 1996: Elected to Lok Sabha (Eleventh) for the 1st time * 13 October 1996-29 September 2000:

Minister of State Minister of State is a title borne by politicians in certain countries governed under a parliamentary system. In some countries a Minister of State is a Junior Minister of government, who is assigned to assist a specific Cabinet Minister. In ...

, Rural Development * May 1999: Elected to Lok Sabha (Thirteenth) for the second time * 30 September 2000-21 May 2004: Minister of State, Health and Family Welfare * May 2004: Elected to Lok Sabha (Fourteenth) for the third time from Perambalur * 23 May 2004-17 May 2007: Cabinet minister for Environment and Forest * 18 May 2007-31 May 2009: Cabinet minister for Communication and Information Technology * May 2009: Elected to Lok Sabha (Fifteenth) for the fourth time from

As a minister

Raja was deputed as the

, Rural Development on 13 October 1996 and he continued to retain the post till 29 September 2000. On 30 September 2001, he was deputed as the minister of state for Health and Family welfare during the National Democratic Alliance. In December 2003, the DMK pulled out of the alliance and Raja resigned his minister's post along with his other DMK colleagues. He continued with the same ministry after the 2004 elections which was won by the

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

led alliance, which included the DMK. His tenure as an Environment ministry came under intense scrutiny in 2011 during the 2G Spectrum case. His association with the key accused in the 2G case, Unitech and DB Realty, was rooted to 2004 when he was the Environment minister. One of the key points out of the CBI is the approval of 2016 clearances given by his ministry in a span of two years from 2006 to 2008, some of which were associated with the trading of hazardous waste. The other issue raised was about the large majority of Raja's supporters in the expert appraisals committee (EAC), responsible for granting clearances to various sectors. In 2007 May,

Dinakaran Dinakaran is a Tamil daily newspaper distributed in Tamil Nadu, India. It was founded by K. P. Kandasamy in 1977 and is currently owned by media conglomerate Sun Group's- Sun Network.''Dinakaran'' is the second largest circulated Tamil daily ...

, the newspaper run by Kalanidhi Maran, the elder brother of Dayanidhi Maran who was the central minister for IT and Communication, ran into a controversy when it published the results of a series of opinion polls which showed M. K. Stalin, the second son of Karunanidhi, having more approval (70%) than his elder brother M. K. Azhagiri (2%) as the political heir of Karunanidhi. It also showed others as 20%, possibly indicating Dayanidhi Maran and Kanimozhi. The Madurai office of Dinakaran was fire bombed by supporters of Alagiri and three employees were killed. The Sun TV office in Madurai was also attacked by the perpetrators.Phandis 2009, p. 145 A day after the incident, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi came to Chennai for felicitating Karunanidhi for 50 years in legislative assembly. Dayanidhi Maran, who usually accompanies Karunanidhi at every function, discarded the event as a mark of protest. On 13 May, the DMK administrative committee empowered Karunanidhi to remove Dayanidhi from the party. This subsequently led to his resignation from the central ministry. Following his resignation, the IT portfolio was allocated to Raja on 16 May 2007. On 17 October 2008, he submitted his post-dated resignation to the DMK party chief, M. Karunanidhi, in protest of the killings of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka.

2G spectrum case

The 2G spectrum financial scandal involved the alleged corrupt sale in 2008 of telecommunications bandwidth to selected organizations at prices that understated the real market value of the asset. The sale is claimed to have occurred when Raja headed the Telecommunications and IT Ministry; it has been considered the largest political corruption case in modern Indian history, amounting to around of lost income for the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

. It is alleged that the sale should have been put under a transparent auction system. A

first information report __NOTOC__ A first information report (FIR) is a document prepared by police organisations in Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asian countries including Myanmar, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan when they receive information about the commissio ...

filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) claims that the allocation was not done as per market prices. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) holds Raja personally responsible for the sale of 2G spectrum at 2001 rates in 2008. In August 2010, evidence was submitted by the CAG showing that Raja had personally signed and approved the majority of the questionable allocations. Although the political opposition was demanding his resignation over the 2G spectrum case, Raja initially refused to resign, stating his innocence, and this view was backed by his party president M. Karunanidhi. He eventually resigned on 14 November 2010. In 2011, the results of an investigation by retired judge Shivraj Patil, who was appointed by then telecom minister

Kapil Sibal Kapil Sibal (born 8 August 1948) is an Indian lawyer and politician. Sibal has represented several high-profile cases in the Supreme Court of India and is widely regarded as one of the famous lawyers of India. He is a Member of Parliament, in Ra ...

, also found Raja to have been directly responsible for "procedural lapses" regarding the sale. The CBI and Enforcement Directorate estimated that Raja could have made as much as Rs 30 billion from the alleged bribes. In January and February 2011, Raja's houses and offices were raided by the CBI, who seized computers as potential evidence. On 2 February 2011, the CBI arrested Raja with his aide, R. K. Chandolia, and Siddharth Behura, the former telecom secretary and placed them in Tihar jail. Raja and R.K. Chandolia are heard in conversation with Niira Radia in the released Radia tapes. Subsequent to his arrest, the DMK supported him on the basis that he was innocent until proven guilty. On 6 June 2012, Delhi court permitted Raja to visit

between 8 and 30 June, on grounds of discharging his previous duties in the state. On 15 May 2012, he was granted bail by the Supreme court under a condition that he would not visit the

Department of Telecommunications The Department of Telecommunications, abbreviated to DoT, is a department of the Ministry of Communications of the executive branch of the Government of India. History Telecom services have been recognized the world-over as an important tool f ...

nor his home state

. He stayed in Tihar jail for fifteen months. The Enforcement Directorate grilled Raja on 10 July 2012 for four hours, to ascertain his role in grant of 2G licenses especially to Swan Telecom and Unitech Wireless. Delhi court on 21 December 2017 acquitted all accused, including former Telecom Minister A. Raja and DMK Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum allocation case and held that the 2G spectrum scam never happened in the first place.

Involvement in real estate

Sadiq Batcha, a close friend of Raja's, shifted his base to Chennai from his hometown of Perambalur, after Raja became a central minister in 2004. He started a real estate firm called Green House Promoters, which had Raja's nephew Paramesh Kumar as joint managing director and Raja's brother A Kaliyaperumal and Raja's wife Parameswari as directors. Parameswari resigned from the post on account of investigations. Batcha started another real estate firm in 2008 called Equals Estates Pvt Ltd, which had Parameswari as a director. The firm had a turnover of 755 crores in two years, mainly attributed to the association of Raja. Batcha was put under the CBI scanner during the 2G spectrum case as they believed him to be the conduit for Raja. On 16 March 2011, Batcha was found dead in his Chennai residence. Police found a suicide note that read the reason as the excessive media coverage that maligned his image. Police registered a case under suspicious circumstances under Section 174 of the IPC.

Controversies

Separate nation for Tamil Nadu

On 3rd July 2022, A Raja said that the Union government is not giving the state autonomy and the Prime Minister and the Home Minister should not force them into demanding a "''thani nadu''" (separate nation) while speaking at a meeting held for DMK local body representatives, in the presence of Chief Minister M K Stalin.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi says all states are to be seen the same, and Home Minister Amit Shah says if you want unity, learn Hindi. The party’s founding father
Periyar Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (17 September 1879 – 24 December 1973), revered as Periyar or Thanthai Periyar, was an Indian social activist and politician who started the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidar Kazhagam. He is known as the ' ...
, until isdeath, demanded a ''thani nadu''. But we (DMK) kept aside that demand for our democracy and national integrity, So, I am saying this with the utmost humility. Our CM is travelling in Anna’s nowiki/>C._N._Annadurai.html" ;"title="C._N._Annadurai.html" ;"title="nowiki/>C. N. Annadurai">nowiki/>C. N. Annadurai">C._N._Annadurai.html" ;"title="nowiki/>C. N. Annadurai">nowiki/>C. N. Annaduraipath so far, do not push us into following Periyar’s path. Do not make us revive our demand for a separate state”

DMK immediately distanced itself from the comments and said that the comments made in support of a separate nation is not the stand of the party.

Books

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Raja, A. 1963 births Living people India MPs 1996–1997 India MPs 1999–2004 India MPs 2004–2009 India MPs 2009–2014 Indian Tamil people Health ministers of India Members of the Cabinet of India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam politicians Union Ministers from Tamil Nadu Lok Sabha members from Tamil Nadu People from Perambalur district Candidates in the 2014 Indian general election 2G spectrum case India MPs 2019–present Inmates of Tihar Jail People charged with corruption