All about winning friends and votes
Vazhapadi K Ramamurthy has been a member
of the Lok Sabha six times earlier and has tasted defeat only once,
in 1996.
A well-known trade union activist, Ramamurthy is a director of
the International Labour Organisation and is connected with numerous
trade union organisations in India. He is also vice-president of the
Asian chapter of the International Federation of Plantation Labour.
Ramamurthy served as minister of state for labour with
independent charge in the Congress government led by P V Narasimha
Rao for a brief period in 1991, and was the first minister to quit the government over the Cauvery
issue.
He was president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee for six years before being replaced
in 1996, when he formed the Tamil Nadu unit of the Tiwari Congress.
Ramamurthy went back to the Congress, but left that party again to
form the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress last year.
An avid supporter of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader J Jayalalitha, he was a key
player in forging the alliance between the AIADMK and the Congress
in the 1989 and 1991 elections. Ramamurthy later turned into her bitter foe
and campaigned for her ouster from power. After
the AIADMK was routed in the 1996 election, Ramamurthy again
moved into the Jayalalitha camp, which led to his newly-formed party
becoming a constituent of the AIADMK-led alliance.
Ramamurthy came to politics through the Dravida Kazhagam
founded by Periyar E V Ramaswamy Naicker. He was also an ardent follower
of K Kamaraj and E V K Sampath.
Born into a farmer's family at Vazhapadi village in
Salem district of Tamil Nadu in 1939, Ramamurthy is a lawyer and married to a school teacher, Kalaimamani. He has two
sons and a daughter.
UNI
EARLIER INTERVIEWS:
'Does Sonia want to save the DMK and the TMC?'
'The Congress is a party of sycophants... I am proud of it. That is the culture of our party'
Elections '98
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