| Candidate Name | A Rasa |
|---|---|
| State | Tamil Nadu |
| Party | Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam |
| Constituency | Nilgiris(SC) |
| Candidate Current Position | MP |
A.Rasa (Andimuthu .Rasa) (age 60) was born in Worlur village of Perambalur district. He is a lawyer and a partner in a private firm and holds the post of Deputy General Secretary of the DMK. His wife's name is MA. Parameshwari. They have a daughter.
He was elected to the Lok Sabha four times and in 2000, he was the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare. Elected to the 14th Lok Sabha in 2004, he was appointed as the Minister of Environment and Forests. In 2007, he became the Minister of Telecommunications and Communications in the Union Cabinet. In 2009, he was elected from the Nilgiri constituency in the 15th Lok Sabha elections and became the Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technology again in the Union Cabinet.
In the 16th Lok Sabha elections, he contested from the Nilgiri Lok Sabha constituency on behalf of the DMK. He lost to C. Gopalakrishnan by a margin of about one lakh votes.
A.Rasa who won the 15th Lok Sabha elections in 2009 in the Congress-DMK alliance. Rasa served as Information and Telecommunication Minister in the Congress cabinet till 2010.
In the report of the Central Audit Office released in 2010, it was said that the advice of the Prime Minister's Ministry was violated in allocating 2G spectrum, resulting in a loss of Rs. 76 thousand lakhs to the Central Government. A.Rasa was interrogated along with other DMK MPs Dayanithimaran and Kanimozhi in this report. Although A. Rasa denied this, he had to resign due to this. He was arrested in 2011 after a CBI investigation.
The judgment of this case was announced in the year 2017 while the investigation of this case was going on under the supervision of the Supreme Court in the Central Investigation Special Court in Delhi. In it, the judge ordered the release of A. Rasa saying that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges in this case.
He is also contesting the 18th Lok Sabha elections from the Nilgiri constituency on behalf of DMK.
