Sudha, a Congress MP who contested and won the Mayiladuthurai constituency in the recently concluded parliamentary elections, is the first MP from his family despite coming from a political family. Belonging to the Vanniakula Kshatriya community (Most Backward Classes or MBC), Sudha hails from a third-generation political family.

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

Sudha's grandfather was an independent MLA and her grandmother was a Congress legislator. His father was a panchayat member. Sudha, (46), a native of Kummidipoondi village in Tiruvallur district, lost her father at an early age, and her mother made her daughter's education a priority at a time when it was customary for girls to be married off at the age of 15 or 16.

“When my father died of a heart attack at an early age, all my mother gave me was a good education. I thought how my education could help people. Sudha, who says that this is why she decided to become a lawyer, has filed two public interest litigations that have had an impact on public policy.

In 2021, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sudha approached the Madras High Court seeking to provide food to children in government schools who depended on mid-day meals. In this petition, “When I was growing up, she ate lunch in my school. I was happy when a Division Bench, accepting Sudha's plea to provide meals to students who depend on school meals every day, ordered the provision of mid-day meals to school students.

Subsequently, in the same year, she filed a case in the High Court seeking installation of sanitary napkin vending machines in schools for girl students. Following these demands, the court ordered some schools to install sanitary napkin machines, he said. Although the first MP from the Sudha family, her journey to the Lok Sabha was not an easy one.

Studied at Read Nadu Dr. PR Ambedkar Law College, Chennai, Sudha joined the Youth Congress as a student and first rose through the ranks of the Congress. She later became the president of the women's wing of the state party wing. He contested the Mayiladuthurai constituency as a Congress candidate in the recent Lok Sabha elections. In this constituency, he contested against the candidate of AIADMK, BMC and Nam Read Party.

In this election, Sudha, who got 5.18 lakh votes, defeated AIADMK candidate Babu by a margin of 2.71 lakh votes. During this election campaign, other political parties pointed out that I am not born in my constituency or belong to this constituency. But I met and greeted and hugged as many as possible in my constituency.

My campaigning style of waving at people instead of greeting them formally attracted a lot of attention. I hugged and kissed women of different castes. This posed a direct challenge to the caste system that promoted untouchability. When I was one of the few Congress leaders to walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir on senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi's approach inspired my political approach and campaigning.

“I saw Rahul Gandhi waving to people and hugging them, which struck an emotional chord with everyone around him. I tried that in my campaign. “Even if I try to say hello, they will wave at me and hug me,” laughs Sudha during the campaign.

Next, I remembered Sudha, the social reformer Periyar, poet Subramania Bharati and Mahatma Gandhi, who recalled the time when he entered the Lok Sabha for the first time to be sworn in as a newly elected MP. In his letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla during the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha, Sudha had questioned how some people could take pictures when photography and videography were banned in Parliament. Notably, a Congress MP was suspended for taking a video in the previous Rajya Sabha.