L. Santhanam is an Indian politician and was a

Member of the Legislative Assembly A Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected to sit in a legislative assembly. The term most commonly refers to members of the legislature of a federated state or an autonomous region, but is also used for several nation ...

(MLA) of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

. He was elected to the

Tamil Nadu legislative assembly The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly is the unicameral legislature of the India, Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It has a strength of 234 members, all of whom are democratically elected using the first-past-the-post system. The presiding office ...

as a

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; ; DMK) is an Indian political party based in the state of Tamil Nadu, where it is currently the ruling party, and the union territory of Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry, where it is currently the main ...

(DMK) candidate from Sholavandan constituency in the 1996 election and from the Usilampatti constituency in

2001 The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...

as a candidate of the

All India Forward Bloc The All India Forward Bloc ( AIFB) is a Left-wing nationalism, left-wing nationalist political party in India. It emerged as a Political faction, faction within the Indian National Congress in 1939, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, and was strongest ...

(AIFB). He stood again for the Sholavandan seat in the

2006 2006 was designated as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification. Events January * January 1– 4 – Russia temporarily cuts shipment of natural gas to Ukraine during a price dispute. * January 12 – A stampede during t ...

, this time as a candidate for the

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; AIADMK, also abbreviated as ADMK), also shortened to Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, is an Indian Regionalism (politics), regional political party with great influence in the Federated state, sta ...

, and lost to P. Moorthy of the DMK. AIADMK leader

Jayalalithaa Jayaram Jayalalithaa (24 February 1948 – 5 December 2016), popularly known as Amma, was an Indian actress, politician, and philanthropist who served as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for more than fourteen years between 1991 and 2016. She ...

allocated the Usilampatti constituency candidacy to Santhanam in the 2001 elections as part of an electoral pact with the AIFB. His 2006 candidacy for the AIADMK was a consequence of a dispute within the AIFB, a party with which he had been at odds since at least 2004 despite being its general secretary. He was the sole AIFB MLA in the 2001-2006 Assembly and he disagreed with the AIFB leadership's interest in abandoning their electoral pact with the AIADMK for the 2006 elections. Despite his attempts in the courts to prevent it, Santhanam was expelled from the AIFB by its new president, the actor-politician Karthik, and reached an individual agreement with the AIADMK to contest a seat in the election. He was initially allocated the Madurai Central constituency but this was changed as Jayalalithaa made numerous adjustments, in part as an attempt to appease local party workers in various areas across the state who had objected to her choice of seat allocations.

References

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam politicians Living people Tamil Nadu MLAs 1996–2001 All India Forward Bloc politicians Tamil Nadu MLAs 2001–2006 All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam politicians Year of birth missing (living people) {{DMK-politician-stub