Narayanasamy to be inducted as member of Assembly on November 23

Congress leader V Narayanasamy, who has been elected to the Puducherry Assembly on Tuesday, has served as Chief Minister of the south Indian Union Territory of Puducherry since June 2016.

Narayansamy was sworn in as 19th Chief Minister of Puducherry on June 6 this year without being a member of the Puducherry Legislative Assembly, he was expected to contest the Assembly election within the stipulated time-period of six months. As a result, he contested the Nellithope by-election and won it on Tuesday. He previously served as Member of Parliament, representing Puducherry in the Lok Sabha. He also served as a Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office in the Manmohan Singh Government. In the 2014 general elections, he was defeated by the NDA candidate R Radhakrishnan, who was backed by the ruling All India NR Congress. 

Narayanasamy is a member of the Congress Working Committee. Born on May 30 1947, at Poornamkuppam Village here Narayanasamy had his school and college education in Puducherry and his LLB at the Ambedkar Government Law College, Chennai. He began his political career in 1975 with the Youth Congress. He was the state general secretary of the INTUC from 1979 to 1985. 

When Indira Gandhi was arrested by the Janata Government in 1978, Narayansamy was imprisoned for organising agitations here. In 1985, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi made him Rajya Sabha Member for the first time. He was the Rajya Sabha Member from Puducherry in 1991 also. Further he held the post of the Rajya Sabha Member for one more tenure and as the Lok Sabha Member from Puducherry once. He was the joint secretary of the AICC in 1997 and later promoted to secretary and general secretary of the AICC. In 2000, Sonia Gandhi made him the president of the Puducherry Pradesh Congress Committee and he was instrumental in the formation of a Congress Government in Puducherry in 2001 and later in 2016.