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

The first-time Congress MP from Tamil Nadu’s Mayiladuthurai constituency, R Sudha, says she was taught the importance of education at a young age.

Sudha, 46, hails from Gummidipoondi village in Thiruvallur district, where girls being married off at 15 or 16 years was a common practice.

“Good education is all that my mother could afford for me when my father died of cardiac arrest at a young age. I thought of how my education could help people,” she says.

She chose to become a lawyer, going on to file two PILs which made an impact on public policy.

In 2021, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sudha approached the Madras High Court to seek the release of dry ration for children in government schools who were dependent on the mid-day meal programme.

“I am someone who had mid-day meals in my school while growing up. I was pleased when a Division Bench ordered for the release of dry rations for students who depended on school meals each day,” Sudha says.

Subsequently, in the same year, she moved the high court to seek the installation of sanitary napkin vending machines in schools for girl students. The court directed some schools to install the machines, she says.

Belonging to the Vanniyakula Kshatriya community (Most Backward Classes or MBC), Sudha is from a third-generation political family: Her grandfather was an Independent MLA, while her grandmother was a Congress legislator. Her father was a panchayat member.

Sudha is the first person from her family to have become an MP. Her journey to the Lok Sabha was, however, not easy. She rose through the Congress’s ranks, first with the Youth Congress during her student days at Tamil Nadu Dr BR Ambedkar Law College in Chennai. She later went on to become the chief of the women’s wing