Meet K Padmarajan, the man who loves to lose elections

He won't be able to contest an upcoming Tamil Nadu assembly by-poll because of precarious health

At 41, K Padmarajan, a homeopathic doctor, was critically ill. His family, wife and son, was devastated when the doctors told them he was unlikely to survive. Family, friends and well-wishers had started pouring into the Tamil Nadu hospital where he was admitted. Hope was diminishing, until, among the flocking people, came along a messenger who informed Padmarajan that he would not be able to contest an upcoming assembly by-poll because of his precarious health. It was as if he had hurled a challenge at Padmarajan. Two months later, the man the doctors had almost given up on filed his nomination and contested the election, only to lose again.

 
Padmarajan's triumph has always been in losing.
 
Dressed mostly in a veshti, Padmarajan, now 60, stands out in a crowd with his big mustache and his record-breaking election feat. To date, he has contested 180 elections, including five times for the country’s highest office, and five times for vice-presidency. He has challenged many a chief minister including J Jayalalithaa for her RK Nagar constituency. Padmarajan has contested various assembly and municipality elections as well. He has been thrice named in the Limca Book of Records as the “most unsuccessful candidate” and next his next target is the Guiness Book of World Records. He calls himself the “election king”, and yet, not a politician.

 

Padmarajan migrated from Kerala to Tamil Nadu in search of a job. He ended up opening a puncture repair shop in Salem. Today, he’s a successful businessman and a homeopathy doctor, who, as an independent, bears the cost of his nominations. He has spent over Rs 20 lakh and says he will continue to contest elections till he lives.
 
Padmarajan says he does not want to be a minister or a lawmaker. He explains his activism through an anecdote. “Back in the day, my friends used to gather at my shop and discuss politics, " he says. "They would talk of politicians as celebrities and the government as if they were taking of a different world, until I floated the idea that men like us can and must contest elections. They mocked me for my simplistic aspiration. To date, I continue to prove them wrong.”

 
Padmarajan says he files nominations for elections across the length and breadth of the country to inform people that public service is not an upscale job and anyone can contest elections. He claims that the Election Commission was forced to alter the rules in 1996 after he had contested on five seats.
 
But his activism comes at a cost: he continues to be mocked by people around him.
 
In his political foray, Padmarajan gained the spotlight when he contested against P V Narsimha Rao in 1991 in a by-poll in Andhra Pradesh, after Rao had become the prime minister following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Rao won the Nandyal seat by over 500,000 votes, setting a new world record. Padmarajan, on the other hand, gained the eye of political parties and the media alike. Since then, Padmarajan claims he has been offered several election tickets, not just by parties in Tamil Nadu but also the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.

 
What stops him from joining a political outfit is a big fear: what if he was to win? The closest Padmarajan has come to winning an election is when he got 6,273 votes in the Mettur constituency, where he lives. Since then, like his picture with folded hands on posters, flyers and batches that print before prominent elections, Padmarajan occasionally dons a blue blazer and steps out to appeal to people to not vote for him.