What next for Tamilisai Soundararajan?

Tamilisai Soundararajan, on Monday, resigned from her post as Telangana governor. Soundararajan sent her resignation to President Draupadi Murmu. She is all set to return to electoral politics.

An official press communique from Telangana Raj Bhavan said, “The Governor of Telangana and Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry Dr. Smt. Tamilisai Soundararajan has tendered her resignation with immediate effect. The resignation has been submitted to the President of India.”

Soundararajan is all set to return to active politics and she might enter the electoral fray from Chennai South or Tirunelveli. Though she contested from Thoothukudi in 2019 and lost to DMK’s Kanimozhi by a huge margin, Soundararajan is known to have stood by the commands from the top leadership. Highly placed sources in the BJP say that she tendered her resignation only after instructions from the BJP’s high command in Delhi. Soundararajan will take part in Modi’s public rally in Salem on Tuesday.

Soon after her electoral debacle, Soundararajan was elevated as the governor of Telangana in September 2019 and was later given the additional charge as the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry in 2021. It was after she took over in Puducherry that the Congress government lost majority and the BJP came to power after aligning with NR Congress in the Union territory.

'Thamarai malarenthe theerum', meaning lotus will bloom in Tamil Nadu, is her most popular slogan. The BJP saw a surge in membership during her stint as the party president in Tamil Nadu in 2014. It was during her term as state party president that the BJP introduced the system of giving a missed call to become a member of the BJP. She was also responsible for setting up booth committees in many of the constituencies, helping the party to grow in the Dravidian land. Her memoir—'Suvaimigu Theneer Thuligal' (Narendra Modi and Memorable Tea Moments)—and her report card every year as governor have always impressed the BJP leaders.

Daughter of former Congress leader Kumari Ananthan, 62-year old Soundararajan is known to be a seasoned politician known to be suave and articulate. Her maternal uncle and Ananthan’s brother H. Vasantha Kumar was a popular leader from Kanyakumari. A businessman, Vasantha Kumar was a MLA and later a MP from the Kanyakumari constituency. With Vasantha Kumar’s passing away his son Vijay Vasanth won on a Congress ticket from the same Kanyakumari constituency in a bypoll.

Though her family has been loyal supporters of the Congress, Soundararajan opted not to inherit her family's political affiliation and chose to join the BJP in the 1990s despite opposition from her father. Hailing from the influential Nadar community in South Tamil Nadu, she spearheaded the state unit of the BJP in Tamil Nadu, during difficult times when no political party was willing to align with the saffron party. Her husband Soundararajan is a renowned nephrologist and she is a gynecologist, who had apparently quit her medical practice after getting into active politics.