BJP national secretary appointed party's Tamil Nadu unit president

CHENNAI: BJP today appointed its national secretary, Dr Tamilisai Sounderrajan, as the party's Tamil Nadu unit president. She replaces Pon Radhakrishnan.

The 53-year-old medical professional was nominated to the post by party president Amit Shah in Delhi, BJP said in a release.

Daughter of veteran Congress leader Kumari Ananthan, she becomes the first woman president of Tamil Nadu BJP. Although hailing from a traditionally Congress family, her father being a former TNCC president, Sounderrajan, however, decided to join BJP.

An orator and writer, Sounderrajan started her political career in her student days.

She has earlier unsuccessfully contested Assembly and parliamentary polls.

A former state vice-president and general secretary, she will take over from the incumbent Radhakrishnan, who is in the middle of his second term, after he was inducted in the Narendra Modi Cabinet upon winning from the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha constituency in the just-concluded general elections.