P. Chidambaram | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha | |
| Assumed office 30 June 2022 | |
| Preceded by | A. Navaneethakrishnan |
| Constituency | Tamil Nadu |
| In office 5 July 2016 – 16 June 2022 | |
| Preceded by | Vijay J. Darda |
| Succeeded by | Imran Pratapgarhi |
| Constituency | Maharashtra |
| Union Minister of Home Affairs | |
| In office 29 November 2008 – 31 July 2012 | |
| Prime Minister | Manmohan Singh |
| Preceded by | Shivraj Patil |
| Succeeded by | Sushilkumar Shinde |
| Union Minister of Finance | |
| In office 31 July 2012 – 26 May 2014 | |
| Prime Minister | Manmohan Singh |
| Preceded by | Pranab Mukherjee |
| Succeeded by | Arun Jaitley |
| In office 22 May 2004 – 30 November 2008 | |
| Prime Minister | Manmohan Singh |
| Preceded by | Jaswant Singh |
| Succeeded by | Pranab Mukherjee |
| In office 1 May 1997 – 19 March 1998 | |
| Prime Minister | I. K. Gujral |
| Preceded by | I. K. Gujral |
| Succeeded by | Yashwant Sinha |
| In office 1 June 1996 – 21 April 1997 | |
| Prime Minister | H. D. Deve Gowda |
| Preceded by | Jaswant Singh |
| Succeeded by | I. K. Gujral |
| Union Minister of Corporate Affairs | |
| In office 1 June 1996 – 21 April 1997 | |
| Prime Minister | H. D. Deve Gowda |
| Preceded by | Jaswant Singh |
| Succeeded by | Inder Kumar Gujral |
| Union Minister of Law and Justice | |
| In office 1 June 1996 – 29 June 1996 | |
| Prime Minister | H. D. Deve Gowda |
| Preceded by | Ram Jethmalani |
| Succeeded by | Ramakant Khalap |
| Union Minister of Commerce & Industry | |
| In office 10 February 1995 – 3 April 1996 | |
| Prime Minister | P. V. Narasimha Rao |
| Preceded by | Pranab Mukherjee |
| Succeeded by | P. V. Narasimha Rao |
| Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha | |
| In office 17 May 2004 – 18 May 2014 | |
| Preceded by | E. M. Sudarsana Natchiappan |
| Succeeded by | P. R. Senthilnathan |
| Constituency | Sivaganga |
| In office 31 December 1984 – 26 April 1999 | |
| Preceded by | R. Swaminathan |
| Succeeded by | E. M. Sudarsana Natchiappan |
| Constituency | Sivaganga |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1945-09-16)16 September 1945 (age 80) |
| Political party | Indian National Congress(1972–1996), (2004–present) |
| Other political affiliations | Tamil Maanila Congress(1996–2001) Congress Jananayaka Peravai(2001–2004) |
| Spouse | Nalini Chidambaram |
| Children | Karti Chidambaram (son) |
| Alma mater | University of Madras (BSc,LLB) Harvard University (MBA) Loyola College (MA) |
| Profession | Senior AdvocatePolitician |
Palaniappan Chidambaram (born 16 September 1945),[1] better known asP. Chidambaram, is an Indianpolitician andlawyer who currently serves as aMember of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.[2] He served as the Chairman of theParliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs from 2017 to 2018.[3][4] He also served as Interim Deputy Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha from 2022 to 2023 underMallikarjun Kharge.
Chidambaram has served as the UnionMinister of Finance four times.[5] Most recently, he held the role for the entirety of theUnited 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 the26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai. Chidambaram returned as Finance Minister in July 2012, succeedingPranab Mukherjee, who resigned to become thePresident of India. He was included inTime 100 list in 2013.[6] He was also the head ofCongress Manifesto Committee for the2019 Lok Sabha Elections and2024 Indian General Elections.[7][8]
Chidambaram was born to Kandanur L. Ct. L. PalaniappaChettiar and Lakshmi Achi atKanadukathan in theSivaganga district ofTamil Nadu. His maternal grandfather was Raja SirAnnamalai Chettiar, a wealthy merchant and banker fromChettinad.[9]
Chidambaram did his schooling at theMadras Christian College Higher Secondary School,Chennai.[10] He then passed the one-year Pre-university course fromLoyola College, Chennai. After graduating with a BSc degree in Statistics from thePresidency College, Chennai, he completed hisBachelor of Laws from the Madras Law College (Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College) and hisMBA fromHarvard Business School in the class of 1968. He also holds a Master's degree fromLoyola College, Chennai.[11]
During this time, his politics inclined to the left and in 1969 he joinedN. Ram, later an editor ofThe Hindu, and the women's activistMythili Sivaraman in starting a journal called theRadical Review.[12]
Chidambaram has two brothers and one sister.[1] 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.[13]
Chidambaram enrolled as a lawyer in theMadras High Court, becoming a senior advocate in 1984. He had offices inDelhi andChennai and practiced in theSupreme Court and various high courts of India.
Chidambaram was elected to theLok Sabha (lower house) of theIndian Parliament from theSivaganga constituency ofTamil 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 NaduYouth Congress president and then the general secretary of theTamil Nadu Pradesh Congress Committee unit. He was inducted into the Union (Indian federal) Council of Ministers in the government headed by Prime MinisterRajiv 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 theGovernment 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. TheIndian National Congress government was defeated in the general elections of 1989.
In June 1991, Chidambaram was inducted as a Minister of State (Independent Charge) 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 (Independent Charge) 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 (EXIM) policy, while at the Ministry of Commerce.[14][15]
In 1996, Chidambaram quit the Congress party and joined a breakaway faction of theTamil Nadu state unit of theCongress party called theTamil Maanila Congress (TMC). In the general elections held in 1996, TMC along with a few national and regional level opposition parties, formed a coalition government.
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[16] for the Indian economy. The coalition government was a short-lived one (it fell in 1998), but he was reappointed to the same portfolio in the government formed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004.
In 1998, theBharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 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 ledUnited 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, theCongress 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.[17]
On 30 November 2008, he was appointed the UnionHome Minister following the resignation ofShivraj Patil who had come under intense pressure to tender his resignation following a series of terror attacks in India, including theMumbai attacks on 26 November 2008.
He has been credited with taking the bold decision of prioritising elections above corporate demands to deploy security for the2009 Indian Premier League.[18]
In 2009, Chidambaram was re-elected from theSivaganga Lok Sabha constituency in the Congress and retained the Home ministry.[19] He was one of the representatives of the central government when a tri-party agreement was signed with the Gorkha Hill Council and theGovernment of West Bengal, an agreement which was a result ofMamata Banerjee's effort to end a decade long unrest in the hills ofDarjeeling.[20]
The Indian National Congress appointed P. Chidambaram as one of thirteen senior spokespersons on 15 September 2014.[21]He ceded his seat to his son Karti in 2014, which resulted in electoral defeat for his son.[22][23][24][25] In 2016, he was elected as an MP of theRajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian parliament from the state ofMaharashtra.
| Year | Constituency | Party | Votes % | Opponent | Votes % | Result | Margin | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Sivaganga | INC | 68.10 | DMK | Tha. Kiruttinan | 51.60 | Won | 16.50 | ||
| 1989 | 65.86 | A. Ganesan | 32.26 | Won | 33.60 | |||||
| 1991 | 67.49 | V. Kasinathan | 29.12 | Won | 38.37 | |||||
| 1996 | TMC(M) | 64.79 | INC | M. Gowri Shankaran | 26.53 | Won | 38.26 | |||
| 1998 | 51.15 | AIADMK | K. Kalimuthu | 41.19 | Won | 9.96 | ||||
| 1999 | 20.85 | INC | E. M. Sudarsana Natchiappan | 40.23 | Lost | 19.38 | ||||
| 2004 | INC | 60.01 | AIADMK | S. P. Karuppiah | 35.62 | Won | 24.39 | |||
| 2009 | 43.17 | Raja Kannappan | 42.74 | Won | 0.43 | |||||
| Position | Party | Constituency | From | To | Tenure | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (1st Term) | INC | Maharashtra | 5 July 2016 | 16 June 2022 | 5 years, 346 days | |
| Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (2nd Term) | Tamil Nadu | 30 June 2022 | 29 June 2028 | 5 years, 365 days | ||
Chidambaram's mother, Lakshmi Acchi, was the daughter ofSir Annamalai Chettiar, a banker and merchant, and was granted the title ofRaja by theBritish. Annamalai Chettiar was the founder ofAnnamalai University andUnited India Insurance Company Limited. His brother,Ramaswami Chettiar, was the founder of theIndian Bank and the co-founder of theIndian Overseas Bank.[27][28][29][30][31]
He is married to Nalini Chidambaram, daughter of Justice (Retd.)Palapatti Sadaya Goundar Kailasam and Mrs. Soundra Kailasam, a renowned Tamil poet and author. Nalini Chidambaram is a senior advocate practising in theMadras High Court and theSupreme Court of India. He has a son, Karti P. Chidambaram, who graduated with aBBA degree from theUniversity of Texas, Austin, and aMasters in Law from theUniversity of Cambridge. Karti, a member of the Congress Party's AICC, is active inTamil Nadu state politics. Karti is married to Dr. Srinidhi Rangarajan, a well-knownBharathanatyam dancer and medical doctor, working with the Apollo Group of Hospitals inChennai. Karti and Srinidhi have a daughter, Aditi Nalini Chidambaram.
He suffers fromCrohn's disease.[32]
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The Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) 1997, which he announced when he was Finance Minister with the United Front government, was condemned by the Controller and Auditor General of India as abusive because of the loopholes that made it possible to fudge data to the financial advantage of the confessor.[33]
Chidambaram was criticised for his ministry's failure to prevent the2011 Mumbai bombings, despite massive investments in security following the2008 Mumbai attacks. Three years after the 2008 attacks, security preparations were proven to be inadequate with channel breakdown and failures in modernising, procuring, and installing security equipment.[34] Chidambaram defended the agencies under his ministry against the charge of intelligence failure with the response which was later ridiculed by many people in India and its media:
Having no intelligence in this case, however, does not mean that there was a failure on part of the intelligence agencies.[35]There has been no intelligence failure. There was no intelligence warning about 13/7.[36]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner in 2011 that data entry operators at Sivaganga had transferred 3,400 votes polled by Kannappan from 11 polling stations in Chidambaram's favour. News reports suggest that on May 16, 2009, the AIADMK candidate Raja Kannappan was declared elected by 3555 votes at 12.30 pm, and the news was also broadcast on television. But in a dramatic reversal a few hours later, P Chidambaram was declared elected by 3354 votes at 4.30 pm, and was confirmed as the winner after a recount at 8.30 pm.[37]
On 7 April 2009, Chidambaram wasassaulted bySikh journalistJarnail Singh during a press conference inDelhi on the issue of a "clean chit" toJagdish Tytler. Singh, who wrote for theHindi daily newspaperDainik Jagaran was dissatisfied with Chidamabaram's answer to a question on theCentral Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) "clean chit" regarding Jagdish Tytler's involvement in the1984 anti-Sikh riots. It was the first shoe throwing incident in India.[38][39]
Chidambaram was part of Vedanta's legal team and on its board before becoming finance minister in 2004 [42].[40] In 2002, a year before UK's Financial Services Authority allowed Sterlite to reconstitute itself as Vedanta Resources Plc, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) served a show-cause notice on three of Chairman Anil Agarwal's family. The notice was a demand that Sterlite directors answer allegations about using their holding companies-Volcan and Twinstar-to avoid paying taxes on forex transactions. It was a polite way of saying there was prima facie evidence, dating back to 1993, that the Agarwals were guilty of money laundering. For seven years the case dragged on in courts as Sterlite employed top lawyers to use every possible delaying tactic. P. Chidambaram argued in Sterlite's defence in a 2003 Bombay High Court case related to the ED's allegations. The following year, Chidambaram found himself appointed non-executive director on the board of Vedanta Resources Plc. And very soon, he became finance minister in UPA 1.
Former Union Minister and Senior Advocate Ram Jethmalani's letter to Chidambaram on 6 December 2013 accused him of acting in collusion with the NDTV and laundering Rs 5000 crores of money throughMauritius route back to India.[41]
In September 2025, Chidambaram revealed that in the aftermath of the2008 Mumbai terror attacks, the Congress-led UPA government had decided not to retaliate againstPakistan for sponsoring the attack, due to intense international pressure, although they were ready to act.[42] Several BJP leaders condemned the admission and accused the Congress party for being soft on Pakistan, commenting that the statement came too little, too late.[43]
In 2006, political leader Dr. Subramanian Swamy alleged that a company controlled byKarti Chidambaram, the son ofMinister of Finance P. Chidambaram, received a five-percent share of Aircel to get part of₹40 billion paid byMaxis Communications for the 74-percent share of Aircel. According to Swamy, Chidambaram withheldForeign Investment Promotion Board clearance of the deal until his son received the five-percent share in Siva's company.[44] The issue was raised a number of times inParliament by the opposition, which demanded Chidambaram's resignation.[45] Although Chidambaram and the then ruling Congress government denied the allegations,[46]The Pioneer andIndia Today reported the existence of documents showing that Chidambaram delayed approval of theforeign direct investment proposal by about seven months.[44][47][48] It was alleged that Chidambaram's son, Karti was a direct beneficiary of the2G spectrum case. His company, Advantage Strategic Consulting had a five per cent stake in Aircel Televentures, even as his father P Chidambaram, as Finance minister, was alleged to have offered FIPB clearance for the Aircel-Maxis deal only if his son's company, Advantage Strategic Consulting, got shares in Aircel Ventures.[49] The Enforcement Directorate iscurrently investigating his involvement in Aircel deal.[50] In 2012, and, subsequently, in 2016, information of wide-scale corruption by Chidambaram's sonKarti Chidambaram andRobert Vadra, with the help of his father's position, including through theAirtel–Maxis deal and theUttar Pradesh NRHM scam, was unveiled in prominent newspapers and media in India.[51] Simultaneously, Chidambaram and his son Karti have been dogged with allegations of corruption, misuse of position, insider trading andmoney laundering.
On 20 August 2019, the Delhi High Court dismissed both anticipatory bail pleas of Chidambaram in connection with corruption charges in the INX Media case during his tenure as Finance minister in UPA Government.[51][52][33][53] On 21 August, he appeared at the Congress HQ and addressed a press conference stating that he was "not accused"; however, he left the place, and, later, he was arrested by theCentral Bureau of Investigation andEnforcement Directorate at his home.[54][55][56] On 5 September 2019,Supreme Court dismissed his appeal against rejection of anticipatory bail plea by Delhi High Court. The Special Court ordered Chidambaram to stay injudicial custody inTihar Jail for 14 days. He was incarcerated for a total of 106 days inTihar Jail. On 4 December he was granted bail by the supreme court.[57]
Chidambaram is a published author of several books.
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