E.V.K.S. Elangovan, senior Congress leader and Erode (East) MLA, no more

Former TNCC chief and Union Minister E.V.K.S. Elangovan's political journey and controversies in Tamil Nadu politics.

Former chief of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) and former Union Minister of State, E.V.K.S. Elangovan, died in Chennai on Saturday morning after a brief illness. He was 73. He is survived by his wife and a son. He would have turned 74 next Saturday (December 21).

At the time of death, Mr. Elangovan represented the Erode (East), a seat held by his son E. Thirumahan Everaa who died in January 2023.

As one who hailed from a prominent political family of Tamil Nadu, Mr. Elangovan was the son of E.V.K. Sampath, one of the founder-members of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) who broke ranks with the Dravidian major in 1961 and subsequently, joined the Congress.

The former Union Minister was also a grandnephew of E.V. Ramasamy or Periyar.

Mr. Elangovan held the post of TNCC president twice - 2000 to 2002 and 2014 to 2016 when the party was increasingly getting marginalised in the State politics. He was elected from the Sathyamangalam assembly constituency in 1984. Twenty years later, he was elected from the now-abolished Gobichettipalayam Lok Sabha seat. It was then that he was made Union Minister of State, holding the subjects of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and Commerce and Industry.

In the run-up to the 2001 Assembly polls, Mr. Elangovan, known for outbursts, accused the AIADMK, an ally of the Congress then, of aligning with outfits that had sympathies towards the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an organisation banned in the country after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. He had also expressed his uneasiness when the Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar) founder G.K. Moopanar struck a chord with the AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa after the DMK joined the BJP government at the Centre in 1999.

In 2006, the former Union Minister, while being in power at the Centre, ruffled the feathers of DMK president M. Karunanidhi by demanding a share of power for the Congress in the State, just like the DMK was part of the Union government as a constituent of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.