Meet R Sudha, Congress’s rising MBC face from Tamil Nadu: Lawyer to Bharat Jodo Yatri to first-time MP

“Good education is all that my mother could afford for me when my father died of cardiac arrest at a young age. I thought of how my education could help people,” she says.

She chose to become a lawyer, going on to file two PILs which made an impact on public policy.

In 2021, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sudha approached the Madras High Court to seek the release of dry ration for children in government schools who were dependent on the mid-day meal programme.

“I am someone who had mid-day meals in my school while growing up. I was pleased when a Division Bench ordered for the release of dry rations for students who depended on school meals each day,” Sudha says.

Subsequently, in the same year, she moved the high court to seek the installation of sanitary napkin vending machines in schools for girl students. The court directed some schools to install the machines, she says.

Belonging to the Vanniyakula Kshatriya community (Most Backward Classes or MBC), Sudha is from a third-generation political family: Her grandfather was an Independent MLA, while her grandmother was a Congress legislator. Her father was a panchayat member.

Sudha is the first person from her family to have become an MP. Her journey to the Lok Sabha was, however, not easy. She rose through the Congress’s ranks, first with the Youth Congress during her student days at Tamil Nadu Dr BR Ambedkar Law College in Chennai. She later went on to become the chief of the women’s wing of the state party unit.

Contesting as the Congress candidate in the recent Lok Sabha polls from the Mayiladuthurai seat, which was won by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the 2019 polls, Sudha was up against the candidates of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), and Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK).

“During the campaign, other political parties pointed out that I was a non-local in my constituency. But I just went about meeting, greeting and hugging as many people in my constituency as possible,” she says.

Her campaign style — waving at people instead of the ceremonial vanakkam — also won her many admirers.

“I hugged and kissed women from different castes. This posed a direct challenge to the caste system that promotes untouchability,” she says.

Sudha polled 5.81 lakh votes, defeating the AIADMK’s P Babu with a margin of 2.71 lakh votes.

She says senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra — she was one among the few Congress leaders who walked with Gandhi all the way from Kanyakumari to Kashmir — gave impetus to her political approach and campaign.

“I saw that Rahul Gandhi waved at people and hugged them, striking an emotional chord with everyone around him. I replicated that in my campaign,” she says. “Even if I attempt a vanakkam, they wave back at me and hug me,” she says with a laugh.

Recalling the time she entered the Lok Sabha for the first time to take oath as a newly-elected MP, Sudha says she remembered social reformer Periyar, poet Subramania Bharati and Mahatma Gandhi.

In that first session of the 18th Lok Sabha, she wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, asking how some people can film in Parliament when photography and videography are barred in it. A Congress MP was suspended for taking videos in the previous Rajya Sabha.