Jana Krishnamurthi

K. Jana Krishnamurthi (24 May 1928 – 25 September 2007) was an Indian political leader who rose to be the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2001. A former Union Law Minister and a member of the Parliament of India, Krishnamurthi was the second person from Tamil Nadu to head a national party in India after Kamaraj.

Krishnamurthi was born in Madurai in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. His mother tongue was Telugu. An alumnus of the Chennai Law College, he gave up his successful law practice in Madurai in 1965. He was persuaded by M. S. Golwalkar, the then chief of the RSS, to enter politics.

An active member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940, Krishnamurthi took over as the General Secretary of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) in Tamil Nadu at the instance of Atal Behari Vajpayee. He played an active part in building an equity for the relatively unknown BJS in South India.

In 1975 when emergency was declared, he was the secretary of the resistance movement in Tamil Nadu. In 1977 when BJS merged with the Janata Party, he became the General Secretary of that party's Tamil Nadu unit. In 1980, he helped found the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, SS Bhandari, Kushabhau Thakre and Jaganatha Rao Joshi. He was the founder National Secretary. In 1983 became one of the General Secretaries and from 1985 he was the Vice-President of the Party.

From 1980 to 1990, he helped the BJP expand in the four Southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

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