M M Rajendran, Who Took Over As Odisha Governor After 1999 Super Cyclone, Passes Away

Bhubaneswar: Former Odisha governor M M Rajendran breathed his last while undergoing treatment at Apollo Hospitals in Chennai on Saturday. He was 88.

He is survived by his wife Suseela Rajendran, two sons and a daughter.

The 1957-batch IAS topper went on to became Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu. He took over as Governor of Odisha in 1999 soon after the state was hit by a super cyclone of unprecedented severity. Rajendran’s experience in relief and rehabilitation stemming from his encounter with a cyclone in Dhanushkodi in 1964 as district collector of Ramanathapuram, helped him set up an efficient response plan to disasters.

“The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee appointed me as the governor of Odisha after the cyclone hit the state. He asked me to take the lead instead of being a typical governor and address the situation. He also instructed the then chief minister to cooperate with me,” he had said during the launch of Tamil translation of his memoir ‘Manam Niraintha Makkal Sevai’ (Service Uninterrupted) at Raj Bhavan last year.

He handed over a copy of his autobiography in Odia to President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan in July this year. The retired IAS officer had then said that the President recalled all his services to Odisha for disaster relief and preparedness and contribution to the development of Higher Education in the state, and still considered him as Odisha Governor.

Rajendran shared excellent relationship with all the three chief ministers with whom he worked and completed his tenure as governor in 2004.

He was also a member of UNICEF’s executive board and vice chairman of its program committee at New York.

Mourning his demise, Odisha Governor Raghubar Das expressed his condolences to the bereaved family.