Journey of Chidambaram from Minister to corruption charges

Former Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram was arrested by the CBI due to corruption charges in the INX Media case.

He presented a ‘Dream Budget’ in the Parliament. Now he is facing nightmares in his career.

Chidambaram is a prominent lawyer. He is famous for his administrative powers.

Chidambaram hails from a reputed industrialist family from Madras. He has done MBA from Harvard Business School. Yet, he did not join his family business and ventured into politics. He joined the Congress in 1967 when the party lost power.

He continued in the Party even when it was split in 1969 and 1984. He served as a junior commerce minister in the Rajiv Gandhi-led government and served as junior minister for commerce and industry in PV Narasimha Rao-led government.

His biggest break in the political career was that he joined Tamil Manila Congress (TMC) by quitting Congress. The TMC at that time was part of the coalition government under Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda.

Later he became finance minister and presented the ‘Dream Budget’ which helped broaden India’s tax base.

At that time, economic reforms were seen as anti-poor. Later, he served as finance minister under Manmohan Singh government. Then he served as home minister and returned to the finance ministry to serve till the end of UPA-II term.

He implemented several reforms to reduce a widening fiscal deficit and attract more foreign investment into the country.

Chidambaram even formed his own party Congress Jananayaka Peravai after quitting TMC. However, his party did not sustain for a long time and he merged his party with Congress.

As soon as the BJP came to power, probe agencies started investigating his connections with corruption cases, including INX Media and Aircel Maxis during his tenure as finance minister. And he was arrested by the CBI amidst high drama.

Image Credit: Kbindia / CC BY-SA

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chidambaram.P.jpg