P. Chidambaram
Palaniappan Chidambaram, better known as P. Chidambaram, is an Indian politician and lawyer who currently serves as a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. He served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs from 2017 to 2018. He also served as Interim Deputy Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha from 2022 to 2023 under Mallikarjun Kharge.
Chidambaram has served as the Union Minister of Finance four times. Most recently, he held the role for the entirety of the United Progressive Alliance government from 2004 to 2014, except for a three-year period as Minister of Home Affairs, during which he oversaw India's domestic security response to the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai. Chidambaram returned as Finance Minister in July 2012, succeeding Pranab Mukherjee, who resigned to become the President of India. He was included in Time 100 list in 2013. He was also the head of Congress Manifesto Committee for the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections and 2024 Indian General Elections.
Early life and education
Chidambaram was born to Kandanur L. Ct. L. Palaniappa Chettiar and Lakshmi Achi at Kanadukathan in the Sivaganga district of Tamil Nadu. His maternal grandfather was Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar, a wealthy merchant and banker from Chettinad.Chidambaram did his schooling at the Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School, Chennai. He then passed the one-year Pre-university course from Loyola College, Chennai. After graduating with a BSc degree in Statistics from the Presidency College, Chennai, he completed his Bachelor of Laws from the Madras Law College and his MBA from Harvard Business School in the class of 1968. He also holds a Master's degree from Loyola College, Chennai.
During this time, his politics inclined to the left and in 1969 he joined N. Ram, later an editor of The Hindu, and the women's activist Mythili Sivaraman in starting a journal called the Radical Review.
Chidambaram has two brothers and one sister. His father's business interests covered textiles, trading and plantations in India. He chose to concentrate on his legal practice and stayed away from the family business.
Chidambaram enrolled as a lawyer in the Madras High Court, becoming a senior advocate in 1984. He had offices in Delhi and Chennai and practiced in the Supreme Court and various high courts of India.
Political career
Chidambaram was elected to the Lok Sabha of the Indian Parliament from the Sivaganga constituency of Tamil Nadu in general elections held in 1984. 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 unit. He was inducted into the Union 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 and 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 in the Ministry of Commerce, by the then Prime Minister Mr P V Narasimha Rao; a post he held till July 1992. He was later re-appointed Minister of State 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 policy, while at the Ministry of Commerce.
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. In the general elections held in 1996, TMC along with a few national and regional level opposition parties, formed a coalition government.
Ministry of Finance
The coalition government came as a big break for Chidambaram, who was given the key cabinet portfolio of Finance. His 1997 budget is still remembered as the dream budget for the Indian economy. The coalition government was a short-lived one, 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 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 led United Progressive Alliance government on 24 May 2004. During the intervening period Chidambaram made some experiments in his political career, leaving the TMC 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. After the elections of 2004, 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 and he merged his party with the mainstream Congress party.
Ministry of Home Affairs
On 30 November 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 26 November 2008.He has been credited with taking the bold decision of prioritising elections above corporate demands to deploy security for the 2009 Indian Premier League.
In 2009, Chidambaram was re-elected from the Sivaganga Lok Sabha constituency in the Congress 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, an agreement which was a result of Mamata Banerjee's effort to end a decade long unrest in the hills of Darjeeling.
The Indian National Congress appointed P. Chidambaram as one of thirteen senior spokespersons on 15 September 2014.
He ceded his seat to his son Karti in 2014, which resulted in electoral defeat for his son. In 2016, he was elected as an MP of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian parliament from the state of Maharashtra.
;Parliamentary Committee assignments
- 13 September 2021 onwards: Member Committee on External Affairs.
Elections Contested
Lok Sabha Elections Contested
Rajya Sabha
Positions held
| Position | Duration |
| Member, All India Congress Committee | 1972 |
| President, Youth Congress, Tamil Nadu | 1973-1976 |
| General-Secretary, Pradesh Congress Committee, Tamil Nadu | 1976-1977 |
| Member, Eighth Lok Sabha | 1984 |
| All India Congress Committee|Joint Secretary, All India Congress Committee | 1985 |
| Union Deputy Minister, Commerce | Sept. 1985 |
| Union Deputy Minister, Personnel, Administrative Reforms, Training, Public Grievances and Pensions | 1985-1986 |
| Union Minister of State, Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions | 1986-1989 |
| Union Minister of State, Home Affairs | 1989 |
| Member, Ninth Lok Sabha | 1990 |
| Member, Committee to review Lok Sabha Secretariat Rules, 1955 | 1990-1991 |
| Member, Consultative Committee constituted under the Punjab State Legislature Act, 1987 | 1991 |
| Member, Public Accounts Committee | 1991 |
| Member, Consultative Committee, Ministry of Finance | 1991 |
| Member, Tenth Lok Sabha | 1991-1992 |
| Union Minister of State, Commerce | 1995-1996 |
| Member, Eleventh Lok Sabha | 1996 |
| Member, Twelfth Lok Sabha | 1996-1998 |
| Member, Committee of Privileges | 1998 |
| Member, Committee on Finance | 1998-1999 |
| Member, Consultative Committee, Ministry of External Affairs | 2004 |
| Member, Fourteenth Lok Sabha | 2009 |
| Union Cabinet Minister, Finance | May 2004 - Nov. 2008 |
| Union Cabinet Minister, Home Affairs | Dec. 2008 - May 2009 |
| Member, Fifteenth Lok Sabha | 2009 |
| Union Cabinet Minister, Home Affairs | May 2009 - July 2012 |
| Union Cabinet Minister, Finance | Aug. 2012 - May 2014 |
| Union Cabinet Minister, Finance | July 2016 |
| Elected to Rajya Sabha | Resigned w.e.f. 16 June 2022 |
| Chairman, Committee on Home Affairs | Sept. 2016 - May 2019 |
| Member, General Purposes Committee | March 2017 - Nov. 2019 |
| Member, Committee on External Affairs | Sept. 2019 - June 2022 |
| Elected to Rajya Sabha | June 2022 |
| Member, Committee on Finance | Sept. 2022 - Sept. 2023 |
| Member, Committee on Home Affairs | Aug. 2023 - June 2024 |
Family and personal life
Chidambaram's mother, Lakshmi Acchi, was the daughter of Sir Annamalai Chettiar, a banker and merchant, and was granted the title of Raja by the British. Annamalai Chettiar was the founder of Annamalai University and United India Insurance Company Limited. His brother, Ramaswami Chettiar, was the founder of the Indian Bank and the co-founder of the Indian Overseas Bank.He is married to Nalini Chidambaram, daughter of Justice Palapatti Sadaya Goundar Kailasam and Mrs. Soundra Kailasam, a renowned Tamil poet and author. Nalini Chidambaram is a senior advocate practising in the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court of India. He has a son, Karti P. Chidambaram, who graduated with a BBA degree from the University of Texas, Austin, and a Masters in Law from the University of Cambridge. Karti, a member of the Congress Party's AICC, is active in Tamil Nadu state politics. Karti is married to Dr. Srinidhi Rangarajan, a well-known Bharathanatyam dancer and medical doctor, working with the Apollo Group of Hospitals in Chennai. Karti and Srinidhi have a daughter, Aditi Nalini Chidambaram.