Mani Shankar Aiyar (born April 10, 1941, Lahore) is an Indian politician. He is from the Indian National Congress. He is the Petroleum Minister in the Manmohan Singh government. He represents Mayiladuturai , Tamil Nadu in the 14th Lok Sabha.

He attended The Doon School, studied economics in Delhi and Cambridge and served for 26 years in the IFS , the last five of which were on deputation to the Prime Minister’s Office under Rajiv Gandhi (1985-89). He resigned from service in 1989 to take up a career in politics and the media, entering Parliament as a Congress MP from the state of Tamil Nadu in 1991 and being re-elected in 1999.

He is a special invitee to the Congress Working Committee and chairman of both the party’s political training department and the department of policy planning and coordination. He is, besides, a well-known political columnist and has written several books, including Pakistan Papers and Remembering Rajiv, as also edited a four-volume publication, Rajiv Gandhi’s India.

He is married with three grown-up daughters. His special interests include grassroots democracy, foreign policy particularly in the neighborhood of his country and West Asia, and nuclear disarmament.

Notable quotes

• I am a Brahmin from Tanjore district. Yet I eat beef. I threw my sacred thread. I married, not a Brahmin, but, a non-Hindu. I am so secular.

External links

• Article in Economic Times about him dated May 23, 2004.
• Information as a member of 14th Lok Sabha on website of Lok Sabha