College going, twenty-one-year-old Arya Rajendran became the next Mayor of Thiruvananthapuram on Monday after tasting victory in the recent civic polls in Kerala.
Arya, now a second-year graduation student of a city college, became the youngest-ever Mayor in the country.
The Thiruvananthapuram district secretariat of the ruling CPI(M) had recommended Arya Rajendran’s name for the post of mayor.
Arya had walked into the prestigious council hall of the capital city’s Municipal Corporation building six days ago to take oath as a Councillor of the ruling Marxist party. She had won from the Mudavanmughal ward of the city corporation, bagging 2,872 votes, 549 more than the rival Congress candidate.
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Daughter of CPI(M) activist K Rajendran, an electrician by profession, and Sreelatha, a LIC agent, Arya is a B.Sc Maths second-year student at the All Saints College.
A state committee member of the Students Federation of India (SFI), she is also the state president of Balasangam, the children’s wing of the Left party, which she had joined at the tender age of six.
As a Mayor, her top priority would be waste management in the capital city, which has been a challenging task for her predecessors also.
“Our city is beautiful. To keep it like this, it should be free of waste. Besides a scientific waste management system, a thorough awareness is needed among people not to dump waste on the waysides,” Arya said.
