Newly inducted health minister K C Veeramani (48), a first-timer representing the Jolarpet Assembly constituency in Vellore district is the first AIADMK minister to represent the Vanniyar community, the second largest population in the district.
His predecessor Dr Vijay (Vellore MLA) is from the Mudaliyar community, the largest population in the district.
Veeramani joins a group of seven ministers belonging to Vanniyar community in the ruling AIADMK cabinet now.
In fact, Vellore district has seen eight ministers from the AIADMK so far. Except K Pandurangan who was a Naidu and Mohamed Jon a Mulsim, all others belonged to the Mudaliyar community.
During the DMK regime however, Durai Murugan represented the Vanniyar community from this district.
The rise of Veeramani as health minister is seen by his supporters as the party’s move to provide a morale booster to the Vanniyar community, going by their population ratio and the long-pending demand from the community leaders in the region.
Besides, this is also seen as an attempt at building a preparatory ground for the parliamentary election next year, to garner Vanniyar votes in the belt, which is evident from the fact that Minister Agri Krishnamoorthi in Tiruvannamalai who belonged to Mudaliyar community was replaced by Mukkur Subramanian, a Vanniyar, recently.
The trend followed in Vellore as well when the Chief Minister replaced Dr Vijay with Veeramani on Wednesday.
Veeramani’s profile appears to have contributed a great deal as a factor for him being selected into the cabinet.
He joined the party in 1993 and rose to become a union chairman, district secretary (east) and then the MLA from Jolarpet constituency.
He is one of the two MLAs representing the Vanniyar community in the district, the other being Sampath Kumar, of Vaniyambadi.
The obvious choice has gone in favour of Veeramani as he is a senior among the two with a good track record.