Pon Radhakrishnan

Pon Radhakrishnan (born 1 March 1952) is an Indian politician from Tamil Nadu, representing the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was the Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Shipping between May 2014 and May 2019.[1] Earlier, he served in the Union Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways in the NDA government. He has 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 is elected to Lok Sabha from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu in 2014. However he lost in the recent 2019 parliamentary elections.

Pon Radhakrishnan
Minister of State for Finance
In office
2 September 2017 – 24 May 2019
Prime MinisterNarendra Modi
MinisterArun Jaitley
Preceded byArjun Ram Meghwal
Succeeded byAnurag Thakur
Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways
In office
2014–2017
Prime MinisterNarendra Modi
MinisterNitin Gadkari
In office
2003–2004
Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee
Succeeded byV. K. Singh
Minister of State for Shipping
In office
26 May 2014 – 24 May 2019
Prime MinisterNarendra Modi
MinisterNitin Gadkari
Preceded byKrishan Pal Gurjar
Member of the Indian Parliament
for Kanyakumari
In office
16 May 2014 – 23 May 2019
Preceded byJ. Helen Davidson
Succeeded byH. Vasanthakumar
Member of the Indian Parliament
for Nagercoil
In office
1999–2004
Preceded byN. Dennis
Succeeded byA. V. Bellarmin
Personal details
Born (1952-03-01) March 1, 1952
Nagercoil, Travancore-Cochin, India
(now in Tamil Nadu, India)
NationalityIndian
Political partyBharatiya Janata Party
ParentsPonniah Ayyappan and Thanga Kani
ResidenceNagercoil, Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu, India
Alma materScott Christian College, Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, Chennai
ProfessionLawyer, Politician

Political career

Pon Radhakrishnan won the 1999 Lok Sabha election from Nagercoilconstituency and became Minister of State for Youth Affairs in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government of 1999-2004. Later, he also served as Minister of State for Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation.[2] Pon Radhakrishnan lost the elections in 2004, 2009 and 2019.[3]

He was president of Tamil Nadu state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, resigning the position when he became a Minister of State in the Narendra Modi-led government.[4] He had won in a Lok Sabha seat in the 2014 Indian general election, from Kanyakumari constituency by a margin of 1,28,662 votes.[5] During this tenure, he served as Minister of State in various portfolios like Heavy Industries, Shipping and Finance. He lost the elections in 2019 to H. Vasanthakumar from Indian National Congress.

Controversies

Fishermen vote controversy

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.[6] 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.[7][8]

Other controversies

On September 2019, Radhakrishnan created a controversy after calling Tamil people as 'ungrateful'.He explained that the Tamil people failed to celebrate Modi after he prasied the Tamil language. Later he claimed that he did not call all Tamils as ungrateful and only those doing politics with the language.[9][10]

Elections

Lok Sabha Elections
Year Election Party PC name Result Votes gained Vote %
1991 10th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Nagercoil 3rd Place 1,02,029 18.82%
1996 11th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Nagercoil Runner up 1,69,885 30.25%
1998 12th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Nagercoil Runner up 2,67,426 45.08%
1999 13th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Nagercoil Won 3,07,319 50.21%
2004 14th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Nagercoil Runner up 2,45,797 36.49%
2009 15th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Kanniyakumari Runner up 2,54,474 33.20 %
2014 16th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Kanniyakumari Won 3,72,906 37.62 %
2019 17th Lok Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party Kanniyakumari Runner up 3,67,302 35.04 %

[11]

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.
  • 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 to 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, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Shipping
gollark: It annoys me that nobody unironically uses machine-parseable languages, so you have to use either horrible regices or giant machine learning models to do natural language processing.
gollark: * 128 possible values, or 7 bits
gollark: This is obviously the best language possible.
gollark: Yes, I saw a document on some RockChip SoC which was in Chinese apart from saying "GbE" and "HDMI" and such in it.
gollark: Even Chinese will be forced to contain English technical terms interspersed a bit.

References
  1. "PRESS COMMUNIQUE - President of India allocates portfolios of the Council of Ministers". pib.nic.in. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
  2. Radhakrishnan "Pon Radhakrishnan" Check |url= value (help). India. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
  3. "P Radhakrishnan Biography". Election. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
  4. "Tamilisai Sounderrajan appointed BJP TN unit president". The Hindu. The Hindu. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
  5. "Kanniyakumari Lok Sabha Elections and Results 2014". Elections. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
  6. "In Kanyakumari, Christian fisherfolk suspect foul play in mass deletion of voters' names, cite opposition to Sagarmala as reason Elections on the GO, Firstpost". Firstpost. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  7. Apr 19, tnn |; 2019; Ist, 04:22. "Fisherfolk fume over many names deleted from the voters list in Kanyakumari | Madurai News - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 30 May 2020.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ARULOLI, M. (23 April 2019). "Over 37,000 names deleted from voters list, say Kanniyakumari fishers". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  9. "Tamils are ungrateful people: Former BJP minister". Deccan Herald. 17 September 2019. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  10. www.thenewsminute.com https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/bjp-s-pon-radhakrishnan-calls-tamils-ungrateful-gets-slammed-109039. Retrieved 30 May 2020. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. SemiColonWeb. "Public (Elections) Department, Tamil Nadu". elections.tn.gov.in. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.