New Delhi: Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan, who unsuccessfully fought the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as a BJP candidate from Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu, resigned from her post Monday, just weeks ahead of the general elections.
Soundararajan, who is also the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, has submitted her resignation from both posts to President Droupadi Murmu, the Raj Bhavan said.
An official communique read: “The Hon’ble Governor of Telangana and Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan has tendered her resignation with immediate effect. The resignation has been submitted to the Honourable President of India.”
The resignation comes in the wake of reports that she may contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from Tamil Nadu. The BJP has released 267 nominees so far.
Her resignation was also on a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was touring Telangana’s Jagtial and Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore.
Daughter of a Congress leader, vocal critic of anti-BJP parties
The daughter of Congress leader Kumari Ananthan, Soundararajan was sworn in as the then-fledgling Telangana’s second governor in November 2019 and was given additional charge as lieutenant governor of Puducherry in February 2021.
A vocal critic of anti-BJP parties, the 62-year-old stepped into politics during her college days. The physician was first elected as a student leader at the Madras Medical College.
She served the Tamil Nadu BJP in various capacities starting from being the South Chennai district medical wing secretary in 1999. The gynaecologist has been the state BJP president for several years before becoming governor.
Soundararajan, however, has lost in all previous attempts to become an MLA or an MP. In the 2009 general polls, she contested the Chennai (North) seat and lost to DMK’s T.K.S. Elangovan. She lost Thoothukudi to the DMK’s Kanimozhi in 2019.
Soundararajan contested the Tamil Nadu Assembly thrice — from Radhapuram in 2006, Velachery in 2011, and Virugampakkam in 2016 and lost all three elections.
The former governor last sparred publicly with the DMK’s T.R. Balu in January, who had called the pran pratishtha ceremony in Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir a “political event”. She questioned why the Opposition was reluctant to attend the event and accused them of politicising a “sacred festival”.
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