Pon Radhakrishnan


Pon Radhakrishnan 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. 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.

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. Pon Radhakrishnan lost the elections in 2004, 2009 and 2019.
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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

Elections

Lok Sabha Elections

Positions