P. Chidambaram

Chidambaram Palaniappan (Tamil: ப. சிதம்பரம்; born 16 September 1945) is an Indian politician with the Indian National Congress and the current Union Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of India. Previously he was the Finance Minister of India from May 2004 to November 2008. However, after the resignation of Shivraj Patil, Chidambaram was made the Home Affairs Minister.^[2]

Early life and education

Chidambaram was born to Kandanur L. Ct. L. Palaniyappa Chettiar and Mrs. Lakshmi Achi in Kanadukathan in the Sivaganga District, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. He was born into the royal family of Chettinad.^[3] Chidambaram did his schooling from the Madras Christian College Hr.Sec.School, Chennai. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree in Statistics from The Presidency College, Chennai, he completed his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from the Madras Law College currently Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, Chennai, and his Masters in Business Administration (M.B.A.) from Harvard Business School class of 1968. He also holds a Masters from Loyola College, Chennai.^[4]

He enrolled as an Advocate in the Chennai High Court. He was designated as a Senior Advocate in 1984. He has chambers in Delhi and Chennai and practices in the Supreme Court and in various High Courts in India.

Political Career

Chidambaram was first elected to the Lok Sabha (Lower House) of the Indian Parliament from the Sivaganga constituency of Tamil Nadu in general elections held in 1984. He was re-elected from the same constituency in the general elections of 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998, 2004 and 2009. He was a union leader for MRF and worked his way up in the Congress party.

He was the Tamil Nadu Youth Congress president and then the general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Pradesh Congress Committee (TNPCC) unit.

He was inducted into the Union (Indian federal) Council of Ministers in the government headed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on 21 September 1985 as a Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Commerce and then in the Ministry of Personnel. His main actions during his tenure in this period was to control the price of tea. He has been criticized by the Government of Sri Lanka for destroying the Sri Lankan tea trade by fixing the prices of the commodity in India using state power. He was elevated to the rank of Minister of State in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions in January 1986. In October of the same year, he was appointed to the Ministry of Home Affairs as Minister of State for Internal Security. He continued to hold both offices until general elections were called in 1989. The Indian National Congress government was defeated in the general elections of 1989.

In June 1991, Chidambaram was inducted as a Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Commerce, a post he held till July, 1992. He was later re-appointed Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Commerce in February 1995 and held the post until April 1996. He made some radical changes in India's export-import (EXIM) policy, while at the Ministry of Commerce.Citation needed

In 1996, Chidambaram quit the Congress party and joined a breakaway faction of the Tamil Nadu state unit of the Congress party called the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC). In the general elections held in 1996, TMC along with a few national and regional level opposition parties formed a coalition government. The coalition government came as a big break for Chidambaram, who was given the key cabinet portfolio of Finance; this put him in the limelight. The coalition government was a short-lived one (it fell in 1998), but he was reappointed to the same portfolio in the Government formed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004.

In 1998, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took the reins of the Government for the first time and it was not until May 2004 that Chidambaram would be back in Government. Chidambaram became Minister of Finance again in the Congress party-Communist Party United Progressive Alliance government on 24 May 2004. During the intervening period Chidambaram made some experiments in his political career, leaving the Tamil Maanila Congress in 2001 and forming his own party, the Congress Jananayaka Peravai, largely focused on the regional politics of Tamil Nadu. The party failed to take off into mainstream Tamil Nadu or national politics. Just before the elections of 2004, he merged his party with the mainstream Congress party and when the Congress won the election, he was inducted into the Council of Ministers under the new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as cabinet Minister of Finance.citation needed

On November 30, 2008, he was appointed the Union Home Minister following the resignation of Shivraj Patil who had come under intense pressure to tender his resignation following a series of terror attacks in India, including the Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008. The public response to this move was generally favourable given Chidambaram's reputation for competence and efficiency.

He has been credited with taking the bold decision of prioritizing elections above corporate demands to deploy security for T20-20 matches if IPL.^[5]

He was one of the members representing the center when the historic tri-party agreement between Gorkha Hill Council was signed with Mamata Banerjee's effort to end a decade long unrest in the hills of Darjeeling.^[6]

In 2009, Chidambaram was re-elected from Sivaganga Lok Sabha constituency in the Congress victory and retained the Home ministry.

He was one of the representatives of the Central Government when a tri-party agreement was signed with the Gorkha Hill Council and the Government of West Bengal. The agreement was a result of Mamata Banerjee's effort to end a decade long unrest in the hills of Darjeeling.^[6]

Controversies and Allegations

In September 2011, Subramanian Swamy moved to Supreme Court of India, after months of request to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to look into Chidambaram's role in the 2G spectrum scam.^[7][8][9] After having not had any favorable response from the Prime Minister he approached the Supreme Court and based on the fair credibility of preliminary evidence and documents, the court agreed to take up the petition.^[10]

In the same case an office memorandum from the office of the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was submitted to the Supreme Court which stated that Chidambaram collaborated in the under-pricing in the 2G spectrum scam during his tenure as Finance Minister.^[11] The court has reserved its order on whether Chidambaram's role in the 2G scam should be investigated.^[7]

Chidambaram has been accused of hoarding black money abroad^[12][13] and petitioners have challenged Chidambaram in the open media and in several noted columns to file a defamation case against them if the allegation was untrue.^[14] Chidambaram has not reponded to this.

He represented the bankrupt American energy giant Enron, as a senior lawyer in India, and is again set to revive its Dhabol power project.^[15][16]

He resigned on 10 July 1992 from the Minister position owning moral responsibility for investing in Fairgrowth, a company allegedly involved in securities scam.^[17]

Chidambaram's speeches for assembly elections in Tamil Nadu have been laced with anti-Hindi rhetoric and had questioned the number of Hindi speaking ministers in the NDA government although he himself was the Finance Minister at that time and later on the Home Minister for the country.^[18]

In 1997, he announced a controversial Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) which granted income-tax defaulters indefinite immunity from prosecution under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973, the Income Tax Act, 1961, the Wealth Tax Act, 1957, and the Companies Act, 1956 in exchange for self-valuation and disclosure of income and assets.^[19] The Comptroller and Auditor General of India condemned the scheme in his report as abusive and a fraud on the genuine taxpayers of the country.^[20]

Chidambaram also represented the controversial British mining conglomerate Vedanta Resources in the Mumbai High Court until 2003 when he became the Finance minister of India. He was also a member of the board of directors of that company.^[21]

In August 2006, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam gave permission to enquire into the allegations that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had been holding office of profit at the time of elections. It has been alleged that they both had been the board members of Rajiv Gandhi Trust Foundation. The Election Commission has been authorised to enquire into the allegations.^[22]

On 7 April 2009, P. Chidambaram was shoed by Jarnail Singh, a Sikh journalist during a press conference in Delhi. Singh, who works at the Hindi daily Dainik Jagaran was dissatisfied with Chidamabaram's answer to a question on the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) clean chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.^[23] Later, Jarnail Singh appeared on a few media channels and thanked Chidambaram for taking no action against him and said that he would apologize to Chidambaram if he got a chance to meet him personally.^[24] He also said that his method of protest was wrong, but the issue was right.^[25][26] He also declined to take money offered to him by the Shiromani Akali Dal, a Sikh political party.

Mr. Chidambaram has been in public conflict with other members of the UPA government on policy issues.^[27] There have been several instances where his public positions have exposed confusion in the policy agenda of the UPA government.^[28] In the past he has regularly announced plans to end Naxalism in the impending future. The most recent announcement was on Jul 30 2010.^[29] Another previous such declaration was on November 10, 2009.^[30]

In 2009, Parliamentary elections, it was alleged in 'The Hindu' that Chidambaram has pressurised the Returning Officer of Sivaganga and doctored the poll results in his favour. AIADMK candidate Kannappan who lost in the poll demanded recounting of votes, which was declined.^[31]

In December 2010, it was reported^[32] that he blamed migrants for the rising rate of crime in New Delhi. He is alleged to have said that Delhi attracts a lot of migrants who live in unauthorized colonies and indulge in behavior that is unacceptable in any modern city. His quote was apparently a reaction to the Sultanpuri gang-rape incident^[33] where an 18 year old girl was the victim. This quote attracted a lot of criticism from opposition parties, with UP chief minister Mayawati alleging that, being the Home Minister, Chidambaram was biased against North Indians. ^[34]

Chidambaram was criticized widely for ordering a police lathi charge at midnight on non-violent protesters at the Ramlila Maidan, Delhi. The protesters led by Baba Ramdev were protesting against widespread corruption in governance and demanding bringing back of black money to India stashed abroad in foreign banks.^[35]

It is also alleged that Chidambaram planned Anna Hazare's arrest to lodge him in Tihar Jail during the recent Anti- Corruption Campaign in India, which sparked off mass protests all over India.^[36]

Chidambaram's effectiveness as the Minister of Home Affairs has been questioned on various occasions. Upon taking office, he promised to tackle left-wing Naxalite-Maoist insurgency. However, there has been no progress in preventing Maoist attacks in India. Chidambaram has been accused of callously sacrificing ill-equipped and unprepared CRPF jawans repeatedly. On 6 April, 2010 76 CRPF jawans were massacred in Dantewada.^[37] Besides condemning the attack, Chidambaram's ministry has made no progress in prosecuting the killers.

In 2010, there were several major attacks by Maoists including a 28 May 2010 train derailment that killed over 150 civilians, a 29 June attack that killed 26 policemen and dozens of other attacks that killed scores of security forces and civilians. Maoist attacks have continued in 2011, including the dismemberment of 10 police officials in Chhatisgarh state.

The RTI Act by advocate and activist Vivek Garg said that Chidambaram had been tasked to “supervise and deal with all financial matters” by a Group of Ministers in the run-up to the games.Documents accessed from PMO reveal that Chidambaram, the then FM, had been tasked with supervising all money matters pertaining to CWG which leads to a loss of 2342 crores. ^[38]

Chidambaram was criticized for his ministry's failure to prevent the 13 July 2011 Mumbai bombings, in spite of massive investments in security following the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Three years after the 2008 attacks, security preparations were found to be inadequate with communications breakdown and failures in modernising, procuring and installing security equipment.^[39] Chidambaram defended the agencies under his ministry against the charge of intelligence failure with the response:

Having no intelligence in this case, however, does not mean that there was a failure on part of the intelligence agencies.^[40]
There has been no intelligence failure. There was no intelligence warning about 13/7.^[41]

Family

His grand uncles and grand father were the Co-founders of Indian Overseas Bank, Indian Bank, United India Insurance and Annamalai University.^{[42][43][44][45][46]}

He is married to Nalini Chidambaram who is a Senior Advocate and a tax lawyer practicing in the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court, primarily in litigation related to the Central Excise department of the Government of India. He has a son, Karti P. Chidambaram, who graduated with a BBA degree from the University of Texas, and a Master of Law from Cambridge University. His son is also a politician in the Congress party.

References

External links

• Personal Website of P.Chidambaram
• Profile at BBC News

Others

• P Chidambaram in 2G scam
• Only dumping Chidambaram can save UPA
• Chidambaram favoured 'fraud' Vodafone-Hutchison deal