The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday, 28 October, appointed Vanathi Srinivasan as the president of its women's wing, party chief JP Nadda said in a statement. She will succeed Vijaya Rahatkar as the BJP Mahila Morcha chief.
Srinivasan, 50, is one of the senior functionaries in the Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP.
Notably, when the BJP underwent a structural change just a month ago, none from the Tamil Nadu cadre were appointed to hold national-level positions.
From Lawyer to ABVP Activist to TN BJP VP
Srinivasan, who hails from Coimbatore, has been a member of the BJP since early 1990s.
A lawyer by profession, Srinivasan began her political journey with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in 1987 and joined the BJP in 1993. She has held various posts within the party, and was appointed the state vice president in 2016.
She contested the 2011 and 2016 Tamil Nadu State Assembly elections, but lost by a significant margin during both her outings.
BJP Leader Who Openly Supports LGBTQ Rights
Srinivasan is one of the few leaders of the party to openly supports the fight for rights of LGBTQIA+ community.
In an interview in 2018, Srinivasan said that she “understood that the LGBT community went through a lot of suffering and ostracism and that the phenomena of homosexuality and intersexuality were only natural.” She also stressed on the need to “move beyond discussing their existence to solving their problems, one needs to move beyond a closed mindset and realize that they are also human-beings.”
She launched the first book on the LGBT community in the Tamil, in 2018, which penned by author Gopi Shankar Madurai.
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