JOIN USMeet Arya Rajendran, electrician's daughter set to become Thiruvananthapuram city mayor, youngest in India
A 21-year-old college student is tipped to become mayor of Thiruvananthapuram city corporation and will earn the credit of being the youngest mayor of the country.
Arya Rajendran, who won the elections from Mudavanmugal ward, is now zeroed-in by Kerala's CPM to fill the mayor post. She is a second-year degree student of All Saint's College in the city.
Arya's father Rajendran is an electrician and mother Sreelatha is a LIC agent.
CPM district secretary Anavoor Nagappan said that a final decision on the mayor candidate was yet to be taken.
Arya, who has been a strong CPM worker right from her childhood, is currently state president of CPM-backed 'Balasanghom', which is considered as the world's largest children's organisation. She is also a member of SFI Kerala state committee.
Arya said that being groomed by the party she was quite confident of taking up any responsibilities being assigned her by the party. Her affinity towards the CPM ideologies started right from her childhood days through her father who has been a staunch CPM worker.
Citing that Arya was yet to get a formal nod from the CPM, she said that her current priority as a ward member was the development of her ward.
"But, the general issue of the city was waste management and the CPM-led council's had been handling the issue well. Having personally experienced the challenges involved in online education, more focus needs to be given on improving the education requirements of the students as well," the second-year BSc Mathematics student told the media.
Arya's name to the mayor post came as a surprise as the names of Jameela Sreedhar and Gayathri Babu were doing the rounds so far. In 2015 also CPM came out with a surprise by elevating young councillor V K Prasanth as mayor and it really benefitted. Prasanth was later elected to the Kerala Assembly in the by-polls.