HYDERABAD: Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan was sworn-in as the new governor of Telangana at Raj Bhavan Sunday morning. Chief justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan administrated the oath of office and secrecy to the 58-year-old governor. She took the oath in English and was sworn-in in the name of god.
Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who was present beside Dr Soundararajan, was among the first to congratulate the new governor.
Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Union minister of state for home affairs G Kishan Reddy, former chief minister of Tamil Nadu O Panneer Selvam, the entire state cabinet, chief secretary SK Joshi, DGP M Mahendar Reddy and several leaders of TRS and BJP were present on the occasion.
Family members of the new governor and several BJP leaders from Tamil Nadu also attended the swearing.
Earlier, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao accompanied by GHMC Mayor Bonthu Rammohan received Dr Soundararajan and family at Begumpet airport where she had arrived in a special helicopter. She was given a guard of honour at the airport.
The new governor comes from a political family and she is a medical doctor by profession. She is the daughter of Congress leader Kumari Ananthan and also a niece of Congress MP H Vasanthkumar.
However, she was attracted to BJP's ideology and started working full time for the party in the 1990s.
Starting off as the South Chennai District Medical Wing Secretary in 1999, Soundarajan climbed the political ladder quickly, and she was appointed as the National Secretary to BJP in 2013. A year later she was elevated as the president of the BJP Tamil Nadu unit.
However, her fortunes in the electoral arena have not been that good. Soundarajan has contested four elections from 2006 -- two Assembly elections and two Lok Sabha elections -- and lost all of them.