Nainar Nagendran (born 16 October 1960) is an Indian politician who is the state president of the

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; , ) is a political party in India and one of the two major List of political parties in India, Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. BJP emerged out from Syama Prasad Mukherjee's ...

, Tamil Nadu (BJPTN), from 12 April 2025. From 19 May 2001 to 12 May 2006, he served as the minister of Tamil Nadu in the ministry led by former chief ministers of Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalithaa and O. Panneerselvam. He is the current legislative leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 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 ...

. He has won the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly elections from the Tirunelveli 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 ...

and

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

as an

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 ...

candidate and in

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

as a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate.

Political career

He left the

(AIADMK) party in August 2017 to join the

. He was one of several AIADMK figures to do so and soon after his move he was appointed a state-level BJP vice-president. As an AIADMK candidate, Nagendran was elected as 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) from Tirunelveli constituency in the

and 2011 state assembly elections. He lost the seat by 606 votes in the election of 2006 and in

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

, when the difference was 601. His opponent in the latter election was A. L. S. Lakshmanan of the

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), a person he had beaten in 2011 by over 38,000 votes. Nagendran served variously as a Minister for Electricity, Industry and Transport during the AIADMK-led government of 2001–2006. He was not a member of the cabinet during the AIADMK government led by

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 ...

from 2011 but he said it was her death and the subsequent rudderless situation in which the party found itself that caused his move to the BJP in 2017. In 2021, as a BJP candidate Nagendran has been elected to Tamil Nadu state assembly from Tirunelveli constituency for the third time defeating the DMK candidate by a margin of 23,107 votes. In addition he has been also selected as the leader of BJP members in Tamil Nadu assembly.

Disproportionate assets case

The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption of Tamil Nadu conducted raids in 12 places belonging to Nagendran in various parts of

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

Kochi Kochi ( , ), List of renamed Indian cities and states#Kerala, formerly known as Cochin ( ), is a major port city along the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea. It is part of the Ernakulam district, district of Ernakulam in the ...

, and his native place of southern Tirunelveli district. In 2006, an investigation revealed the accumulation of assets in excess of his income when he was a minister of Tamil Nadu. It also revealed that Nagendran bought properties, including gold jewellery and lands. A chargesheet was filed in December 2010 against Nagendran, his wife and four other relatives under the Prevention of Corruption Act for a ₹3.9 crore disproportionate assets case by the Directorate of Vigilance.

Controversy

Nainar Nagendran has sent death threats against acclaimed Tamil lyricist and writer

Vairamuthu Vairamuthu Ramasamy (born 13 July 1953) is an Indian lyricist, poet, and novelist working in the Tamil film industry. He is a prominent figure in the Tamil literary world. A master's graduate from the Pachaiyappa's College in Chennai, he firs ...

in January 2018 for his controversial remarks on

Andal Andal (ISO 15919: Āṇḍāḷ), also known as Godhai, Nachiyar, and Godha Devi, is the only female Alvars, Alvar. (Orthodoxy posits the number of Alvars as ten, though there are other references that include Andal and Madhurakavi Alvar, ...

. He has announced that BJP leaders are ready to award a cash reward of ₹10 crore if anyone slays and chops the tongue of Vairamuthu. He also said there should be no hesitation in killing even those who speak ill of

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...

. This created a giant controversy in Tamil Nadu. Later, he was arrested together with Hindu Munnani state vice-president, V. C. Jayabalan, for provocative

hate speech Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. It is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as ...

that would cause divisiveness among the people and posed a threat to national unity.

Elections contested and positions held

Lok Sabha elections

Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly elections

Positions in Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nagenthiran, Nainar All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam politicians Living people State cabinet ministers of Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu MLAs 2001–2006 Tamil Nadu MLAs 2011–2016 Bharatiya Janata Party politicians from Tamil Nadu Year of birth missing (living people) Tamil Nadu MLAs 2021–2026