Nainar Nagendran

Nainar Nagendran is an Indian politician in the state of Tamil Nadu who left the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party in August 2017 to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was one of several AIADMK figures to do so and soon after his move he was appointed as a state-level BJP vice-president.

As an AIADMK candidate, Nagendran was elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Tirunelveli constituency in the 2001 and 2011 state assembly elections. He lost the seat by 606 votes in the election of 2006 and in 2016, when the difference was 601. His opponent in the latter election was A. L. S. Lakshmanan of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a person he had beaten in 2011 by over 38,000 votes.

Nagendran served variously as a Minister for Electricity, Industry and Transport during the AIADMK-led government of 2001-2006. He was not a member of the cabinet during the AIADMK government led by Jayalalithaa from 2011 but he said it was her death and the subsequent rudderless situation in which the party found itself that caused his move to the BJP in 2016.