Congress veteran and former State cabinet minister G Bhuvaraghavan passed away at his residence in Alwarpet here early on Sunday. He was 86 and had been in poor health of late. Congress leaders and recent AIADMK recruit Panruti S Ramachandran paid their respects to the veteran.
Bhuvaraghavan had first been elected to the Madras State Legislative Assembly in 1962 from the Vridhachalam constituency, from where he hailed. He was inducted into the cabinet of then Chief Minister K Kamaraj, as minister for publicity and information. He also served under M Bhakthavatsalam when Kamaraj remitted office as part of the Kamaraj Plan in 1963.
Bhuvaraghavan was the only minister of the 1962-67 Congress government to be elected back to the Assembly, again from Vridhachalam, in the 1967 elections, when the DMK formed the first non-Congress government in the State. He went on to contest and win the Mettur and Cuddalore Lok Sabha constituencies in the 1971 and 1977 elections, respectively. He had also by this point served as the vice president of the Congress’s State unit.
Bhuvaraghavan then shifted loyalties to the Janata Party, and faced his first electoral loss in the 1980 Lok Sabha elections, when he lost in the Dharmapuri constituency to DMK’s K Arjunan. He then got elected back to the Assembly in 1989, on a Janata Party ticket, once again from Vridhachalam. The final election he contested was the1991 Lok Sabha polls, where he lost in the Cuddalore constituency to the Congress candidate, in the post-Rajiv Gandhi assassination sympathy wave.
PMK leader S Ramadoss issued a statement expressing grief over the death of Bhuvaraghavan, who he said was an example of how a minister should function.