South Indian representation absent in Delhi’s political landscape?

As the 2025 Assembly elections unfold, the absence of South Indian candidates in mainstream politics underscores a persistent challenge to inclusivity in the national capital.

Despite Delhi’s diverse demographics, the city’s political space has consistently marginalised linguistic minorities, particularly candidates from South India.

The 2025 Delhi Assembly elections have reinforced this trend, with no mainstream party, AAP, BJP, or Congress fielding a single South Indian or non-Hindi-speaking candidate. Interestingly, in 2013, the Delhi Assembly elections witnessed 11 candidates contesting from the late Vijayakanth's DMDK party. Unfortunately, all of them lost, and after that South Indians have not made a major comeback in Delhi Assembly elections.

Near-certain defeat

The only South Indian candidates in the fray come from smaller, less influential parties. Shejo Varghese Kurien is contesting from Vikaspuri on a CPI ticket, G Thulasidharan is representing the People's Green Party in Dwarka, Saravanan is running for the Rashtriya Manav Party from RK Puram, and D Nageshwara Rao is standing from New Delhi under the Jatiya Jana Sena Party banner. However, given Delhi’s entrenched political dynamics, these candidates face near-certain defeat, with little chance of even retaining their deposits.

South Indians have had a minimal presence in Delhi’s political history. In 1957, Malayali leader C Krishnan Nair, often referred to as the “Gandhi of rural Delhi” was briefly considered for the post of Chief Minister following a proposal by then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

In the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress nominated CM Stephen from New Delhi to take on Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Janata Party. Despite a hard-fought contest, Stephen was defeated.

Just one MLA

Since the Delhi Assembly was reinstated in 1993, only one South Indian has managed to secure a seat - Meera Bharadwaj, a Malayali Congress candidate, who won from Patparganj in 1998.

Frustration over the lack of representation runs deep within the South Indian community in Delhi. Tamilian cricketer Venkat Sundram, who captained Delhi University’s team and later headed the BCCI Pitch Committee, has spoken out about the issue. He noted that his father, P V Sundram, was one of the founders of the Delhi Tamil Education Association (DTEA), yet South Indians continue to be overlooked politically.

Journalists argue that linguistic minorities in Delhi are marginalized, unlike in Mumbai, where non-local communities have greater political influence.

The reasons

So, why do South Indians remain politically invisible in Delhi?

According to Senior journalist Ganapathy Subramaniam, the issue lies in voter numbers and categorization. He says, "there is a lot of clamour for the votes of Poorvanchalis or people who have migrated from East Indian states as they are large in number and quite influential in many pockets of Delhi. The same cannot be said about South Indians, even though there are an estimated 35 lakh South Indians living in Delhi. However, many of them are not registered as voters as they intend to go back to their home state. Even those who are registered as voters are not categorised as Telugu-speaking or Malayalam-speaking or Tamil-speaking since election commission data does not include these aspects."

This lack of voter registration and political categorization means South Indians remain a fragmented and politically insignificant demographic in Delhi, leading to their consistent exclusion from the mainstream political narrative.