Pon Radhakrishnan (born 1 March 1952) is an Indian politician representing 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 ...

. He was the Minister of State in the

Ministry of Finance A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfoli ...

and Ministry of Shipping between May 2014 and May 2019. Earlier, he served as the Union Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways in the NDA government. He has also served as the Minister of State for Youth affairs and Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation in Third Vajpayee Ministry. He was elected to

Lok Sabha The Lok Sabha, also known as the House of the People, is the lower house of Parliament of India which is Bicameralism, bicameral, where the upper house is Rajya Sabha. Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by a ...

from

Kanyakumari Kanyakumari (Tamil; / kəɳjɑkʊmɑɾiː/; referring to Devi Kanya Kumari, officially known as Kanniyakumari, formerly known as Cape Comorin) is a town and a municipality in Kanyakumari district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. It is the ...

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 ...

in 2014. He lost in the recent 2019, 2021 (by-election) and 2024 parliamentary elections.

Personal life

Radhakrishnan was born on March 1, 1952, in Alanthangarai village, Kanyakumari district to his father Ponnaya Ayyappan and mother Thangakani into a traditional Congress family, Radhakrishnan holds a BL Degree from Government Law College, Chennai.

Political career

Early political career

After

Kamaraj Kumaraswami Kamaraj (15 July 1903 – 2 October 1975), popularly known as Kamarajar was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Madras from 13 April 1954 to 2 October 1963. He also served as the pr ...

's demise, some of Radhakrishnan's family members joined the Janata Party. Radhakrishnan's brother Ramakrishnan joined the Hindu nationalist

Jana Sangh The Akhil Bharatiya Jana Sangh ( BJS or JS, short name: Jan Sangh) was a Hindutva political party active in India. It was established on 21 October 1951 in Delhi by three founding members: Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Balraj Madhok and Deendayal ...

and took charge as the district chairman. Radhakrishnan's uncle Chidambaram Athiswami Nadar contested and won the Colachal constituency in the 1977 elections on behalf of the

Janata Party The Janata Party (JP, ) is an unrecognised political party in India. Navneet Chaturvedi is the current president of the party since November 2021, replacing Jaiprakash Bandhu. The JP was established as an amalgam of Indian political partie ...

. In 1981, Radhakrishnan joined a

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS,, ) is an Indian right-wing politics, right-wing, Hindutva, Hindu nationalist volunteer paramilitary organisation. It is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar ( ...

(RSS) and later became its secretary. Later, Radhakrishnan's father Ponnaya Ayyappan was elected as the District President of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Radhakrishnan joined the Hindu Munnani which was started in 1980, began to grow slowly in the Kanyakumari district. He traveled with its founder Rama Gopalan throughout Tamil Nadu for about a year as his assistant. He also worked as a co-organizer of the Hindu Munnani in the state. Radhakrishnan contested the Lok Sabha elections in Nagercoil for the first time in the 1991 elections. Despite being in the Hindu Munnani at the time, he contested as a BJP candidate and got 1 lakh 2 thousand 29 votes.

As minister and political career (2003 — 2009)

Pon Radhakrishnan won the 1999

election from

Nagercoil Nagercoil, natively spelt as Nāgarkovil (, "Temple of the Nāgas", or Nagaraja-Temple), is a Municipal Corporation city and the administrative headquarters of Kanyakumari District in Tamil Nadu state, India. Situated close to the tip of the ...

constituency and became Minister of State for Youth Affairs in the

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Atal Bihari Vajpayee (25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was an Indian poet, writer and statesman who served as the prime minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 ...

-led NDA government of 1999–2004. Later, he also served as Minister of State for Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation. Radhakrishnan was defeated by a CPI (M) candidate in the Nagercoil Lok Sabha constituency in 2004, and in 2009, he was beaten by a DMK candidate in Kanniyakumari Lok Sabha constituency.

As minister and political career (2009 — 2019)

He was president of

state unit of the

, resigning the position when he became a Minister of State in the

Narendra Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who has served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Par ...

-led government. He had won in a Lok Sabha seat in the

2014 Indian general election General elections were held in India in nine phases from 7 April to 12 May 2014 to elect the members of the 16th Lok Sabha. With 834 million registered voters, they were the largest-ever elections in the world until being surpassed by the 2019 ...

, from

constituency by a margin of 1,28,662 votes. During this tenure, he served as Minister of State in various portfolios like Heavy Industries, Shipping and Finance.

Politics (2019 — present)

In September 2019, Radhakrishnan created a controversy after calling Tamil people as 'ungrateful'.He explained that the Tamil people failed to celebrate Modi after he praised the Tamil language. Later he claimed that he did not call all Tamils as ungrateful and only those doing politics with the language. Pon. Radhakrishnan participated in a BJP rally in support of Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 in Nagercoil in March 2020 where he spoke of chasing away Christian priests from the district. Many demanded that action be taken against Pon. Radhakrishnan for his communal speech which can incite violence. Police complaints were also filed against him. Fishermen in Kanniyakumari claimed that around 40,000 - 45,000 fishermen votes in the 48 coastal hamlets in Kanyakumari Lok Sabha constituency was deliberately removed from the electoral-list out of fear that the fishermen would vote against the lone BJP Union minister, Pon Radhakrishnan, contesting in the constituency during the 2019 Lok sabha elections. The coastal fishermen also complained that votes of inland fishermen in another 68 villages also have been removed purposely. They also alleged that their names were removed only a few days before the day of polling. He lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 by a margin of 2.59 lakh votes to H. Vasanthakumar from Indian National Congress. After the death of Vasanthakumar, he again contested in 2021 Lok Sabha by-election. But he was defeated by a margin of 1,37,950 votes by Vijay Vasanth who is the son of late Vasanthakumar. He again contested in 2024 election and lost again.

Political views

Pon Radhakrishnan claimed in 2018 that the #MeToo movement was launched by "people with perverted minds" and questioned if it was appropriate to make charges about occurrences that took place years ago. He claimed it "corrupts the purity of our land and honor of women" and said it is not a good thing. He also questioned the fairness of "if someone made such an allegation about an incident when playing together in Class 5" and asked whether it would be appropriate for men to begin levelling similar allegations against women. Radhakrishnan in 2019 asked Tamil people to study

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

. He said that could not learn Sanskrit for various reasons and that he was ashamed of it. He also said that Sanskrit and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

are equal. He also urged parents to let their children to learn Sanskrit.

Electoral Career

Lok Sabha Elections Contested

Lok Sabha

Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Elections Contested

Positions

* 1999 - Elected to 13th Lok Sabha. * 1999 to 2000 - Member, Standing Committee on Industry. * 2000 - Member, Consultative Committee, Ministry of Surface Transport. * 2000 to 2003 - Minister of State,

Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports is a branch of the Government of India which administers the Department of Youth Affairs and the Department of Sports in India. Mansukh Mandaviya is the current Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports foll ...

. * 2003 - Minister of State, Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation. * 2003 - Minister of State, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. * 2014 - Re-elected to 16th Lok Sabha (2nd term). * 2014 - Minister of State, Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises * 2014 to 2017- Minister of State, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and Ministry of Shipping * 2017 to 2019 - Minister of State,

and Ministry of Shipping

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Radhakrishnan, Pon 1952 births Living people Union ministers from Tamil Nadu Lok Sabha members from Tamil Nadu India MPs 1999–2004 India MPs 2014–2019 Bharatiya Janata Party politicians from Tamil Nadu People from Nagercoil Narendra Modi ministry