Two novice ministers in the Tamil Nadu cabinet, whose relatives are they?

When the DMK government in Tamil Nadu recently announced its cabinet reshuffle, two appointments quietly slipped through without much national noise. Two first-time MLAs, men with zero prior administrative or political experience, were handed two of the most powerful and financially significant portfolios in the state: Finance and Public Works Department (PWD).

Written and published by Deepak Sriram, Delhi, 24 May 2026, Sunday, 5:10 PM IST

On the surface, it looks like a routine cabinet decision. But dig just a little deeper, and a question starts forming in your mind, why exactly these two men?

Who Are These New Ministers?

The two newly appointed ministers are sons-in-law of two extremely powerful business figures in Tamil Nadu. One is connected to a ₹3,000 crore education empire, and the other has family ties to one of India's most well-known lottery businessmen. Both are first-timers in the assembly. Neither has a track record of governance, public administration, or even significant grassroots political work.

Yet they were given Finance, which controls the state's entire budget, spending decisions, and economic direction and PWD, which oversees thousands of crores worth of road, bridge, and infrastructure contracts across Tamil Nadu every single year.

Why Did This Happen?

Let's be honest about how politics works in India, and Tamil Nadu is no exception. Elections are expensive. Running a party machinery, funding campaigns, managing booth-level workers, all of this requires enormous money. Powerful businessmen who fund political parties expect returns on that investment, not always in cash, but in access, influence, and protection.

Handing key portfolios to family members of such businessmen is one of the cleanest ways to ensure that access. The son-in-law sits in the minister's chair. The business family gets a direct line to government decisions. Contracts get awarded. Policies get shaped. And nobody has to sign anything suspicious.

It is a system that has existed across parties and states for decades. It just rarely gets called out so directly.

So Why Is This Controversial Now?

Because of the politics of hypocrisy.

The Congress party and Rahul Gandhi specifically, have built their entire recent political identity around attacking "crony capitalism." The famous "suit-boot ki sarkar" jab at the Modi government, the constant targeting of Adani and Ambani, the yatras and press conferences framing the BJP as a government that serves the wealthy over the poor, this has been Congress's loudest and most consistent message for years now.

The DMK is a core ally of Congress. They share stages, manifestos, and opposition platforms together. So when the DMK does the very thing Congress accuses others of doing and Congress stays completely silent, it raises a fair question: Was the outrage ever about the principle, or only about who benefits?

What Will Be the Impact?

In practical terms, having inexperienced ministers in Finance and PWD is genuinely concerning. Tamil Nadu is a large, economically significant state. These are not ceremonial roles. Decisions made here affect infrastructure spending, school funding, hospital budgets, and employment for crores of people. Inexperience at the top often means real power shifts to bureaucrats and backroom advisors, which creates its own accountability problems.

Politically, this gives the BJP and other opposition parties strong ammunition. Expect this to be raised loudly in upcoming elections and debates.

More broadly, it reminds ordinary Indians of a frustrating truth: the language of fighting corruption and cronyism is used freely by everyone in Indian politics, but mostly as a weapon against opponents, rarely as a mirror turned on themselves.

Selective silence, as someone put it, is not innocence. It rarely is.