New Delhi, Novermber, 15 : He zips through the bumpy roads of his picturesque Nilgiris constituency in a sleek Pajero, but Andimuthu Raja does not even own an old Ambassador car. The Union communications and information technology minister — he is now called 'spectrum' Raja in Tamil Nadu — may face allegations of having caused a loss of Rs 1.77 lakh crore to the nation, but he and his wife don't even own a car and together, their assets add up to just Rs 1.4 crore, according to his last affidavit to the Election Commission presented less than a year ago.
His concrete house in Velur village in Perambalur district of central Tamil Nadu is a modest structure with a thatched verandah. Only a small poster and few residents in the village are reminders of the fact that Raja once grew up in this modest house and rode a Lambretta as a struggling lawyer and an aspiring Dravidian politician.
Even as the DMK's dalit face braves the biggest storm of his three-decade-long political career, his family and supporters have rallied around him. "He will come out of it. He is very courageous," says his elder sister Vijayambal, a retired government school headmistress, sitting in their ancestral house.
Indeed, that defines Raja — a defiant, doughty dalit. In Tamil Nadu's politics, which is dominated by backward class leaders, Raja is the lone dalit in the last few decades to have moved from the rural backwoods all the way to Delhi. In DMK, political graphs soar not just through proximity to the first family, but also by oratorical skills and an intellectual veneer. "Raja's advantage is that he is a well-read dalit, who can communicate both in Tamil and English, which few DMK leaders can," points out a senior party leader. "When Karunanidhi's family wanted a trusted man in Delhi, outside of the Maran clan, the affable Raja was a natural choice."
Ironically, 47-year-old Raja's meteoric rise began due to his rapport with the late Murasoli Maran, nephew of CM M Karunanidhi. Raja was always at the bedside of the senior Maran in his last days in hospital. But two years ago, equations in the DMK changed dramatically and Raja replaced Dayanidhi Maran (Murasoli Maran's son) as IT minister. Indeed, it was the Maran-owned Sun TV channel which focused on the spectrum 2G scandal. Dayanidhi made a comeback into DMK on the eve of the 2009 parliamentary elections, but Raja managed to retain the powerful IT ministry because of support from Karunanidhi's wife Rajathi Ammal (Kanimozhi's mother). When Raja's pocketborough Perambulur was dereserved, Karunanidhi immediately provided him a safe berth in the Nilgiris constituency in the 2009 elections.
Raja maintains close ties with Karunanidhi's son and heir-apparent M K Stalin too
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