Muthuvelayudha Perumal Appavu is an Indian Tamil politician and
Member of the Legislative Assembly
A member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected by the voters of a constituency to a legislative assembly. Most often, the term refers to a subnational assembly such as that of a state, province, or territory of a country. S ...
(MLA) in
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...
. He is the current
Speaker
Speaker may refer to:
Society and politics
* Speaker (politics), the presiding officer in a legislative assembly
* Public speaker, one who gives a speech or lecture
* A person producing speech: the producer of a given utterance, especially:
** In ...
of
Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly
The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly is the unicameral legislature of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It has a strength of 234 members of whom are democratically elected using the First-past-the-post voting, First-past-the-post system. The pres ...
. He has contested in the
Radhapuram state assembly constituency and won four times.
Elections
Appavu has been described by ''
The Hindu
''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...
'' as a regional "heavyweight" of the
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...
(INC) who joined a splinter group, then stood for election as an independent during a period of intra-party troubles, and eventually transferred his allegiance to the
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; DMK) is a political party based in the state of Tamil Nadu where it is currently the ruling party having a comfortable majority without coalition support and the union territory of Puducherry where it is curre ...
(DMK).
He has been elected to the
Tamil Nadu legislative assembly
The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly is the unicameral legislature of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It has a strength of 234 members of whom are democratically elected using the First-past-the-post voting, First-past-the-post system. The pres ...
as a
Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar) candidate from Radhapuram in the
1996 election, as an
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
candidate in
2001
The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...
and as a DMK candidate in
2006
File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
.
The Radhapuram constituency was not contested by the DMK in the
2011 elections
The following elections occurred in the year 2011.
* Local electoral calendar 2011
* National electoral calendar 2011
* 2011 United Nations Security Council election
Africa
* 2011 Beninese presidential election
* 2011 Beninese parliamentary el ...
because they entered into an alliance with the INC. In the
2016 elections
The following elections occurred in the year 2016.
Africa
Benin Republic
*2016 Beninese presidential election 6 March 2016
Cape Verde
* 2016 Cape Verdean presidential election 2 October 2016
Chad
* 2016 Chadian presidential election 10 A ...
, Appavu again contested the seat as a DMK candidate. In a surprise result, he lost by 49 votes to
I. S. Inbadurai of the
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). This was the narrowest losing margin in the state and he appealed against the outcome, arguing amongst other things that the
Returning Officer had improperly rejected some postal votes.
He had staged a protest regarding the matter at the time of the count, which led to him being evicted from the building.
He contested 2021 assembly election from Radhapuram constituency as a DMK candidate and won with a margin of about 5000 votes.
In May 2021, he was elected unopposed as the speaker of the 16th Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.
Campaigning
Appavu's campaigning for farmers' rights has led him to file
Public Interest Litigation papers on several occasions.
In 2013, he spoke in court of the need to impose minimum price controls on agricultural produce in order to reduce the alleged incidence of suicide among farmers and to prevent profiteering by middlemen. He also wanted an improved agricultural insurance scheme to ward against the effects of crop losses that occurred as a consequence of natural events.
Appavu has also been associated with matters relating to water supplies and was responsible for the introduction of drinking water schemes that use the
Ponnankurichi and
Tamirabarani
The Thamirabarani or Tamraparni or Porunai is a perennial river that originates from the Agastyarkoodam peak of Pothigai hills of the Western Ghats, above Papanasam in the Ambasamudram taluk. It flows through Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi distr ...
rivers.
In 2017, he won an order at the
Madras High Court
The Madras High Court is a High Court in India. It has appellate jurisdiction over the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It is located in Chennai, and is the third oldest high court of India after the Calcutta High C ...
that the
Government of Tamil Nadu
Government of Tamil Nadu is the subnational government for the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is seated at Fort St George, Chennai. The legislature of Tamil Nadu was bicameral until 1986, when it was replaced by a unicameral legislature, lik ...
should comply with the court's instructions of 2002 to investigate the relationship between incidences of water scarcity and the practice of river sand quarrying for construction purposes. At the same time, he was campaigning against water extraction from the Tamirabarani river by businesses associated with
PepsiCo
PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the food and beverage market. It oversees the manuf ...
and
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...
. He argued that the government was preferring the needs of the businesses over those of the population in area where water was scarce. He said that while other businesses that took more water were justified in doing so, the soft drinks businesses were exploitative because they were "commodifying water by fetching it for a minuscule price and selling it later for an astronomically higher price".
There was some controversy in 2009 when there was an attempt to name a bus-stand in Radhapuram after the parents of DMK leader,
Karunanidhi
Muthuvel Karunanidhi (3 June 1924 – 7 August 2018) was an Indian writer and politician who served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for almost two decades over five terms between 1969 and 2011. He was popularly referred to as Kalaignar (Art ...
, and to erect statues commemorating them. The AIADMK claimed that the DMK-led government was facilitating the idea but the government said that the project was led by Appavu and 90 per cent funded by him. After much back-and-forth disputation, the stand was eventually named in honour of
K. Kamaraj
Kumaraswami Kamaraj (15 July 1903 – 2 October 1975, hinduonnet.com. 15–28 September 2001), popularly known as Kamarajar was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Madras State (Tamil Nadu) ...
in 2010.
Electoral performance
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Appavu, M.
Living people
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam politicians
Independent politicians in India
Tamil Maanila Congress politicians
Tamil Nadu MLAs 1996–2001
Tamil Nadu MLAs 2001–2006
Tamil Nadu MLAs 2006–2011
Tamil Nadu MLAs 2021–2026
1952 births
Tamil Nadu politicians