Vellamvelly Muraleedharan (born 12 December 1958) is an Indian politician from Kerala and current Union Minister of State for External Affairs & Parliamentary Affairs of India since 30 May 2019. He was the eighth State President of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala. He is also a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament representing the state of Maharashtra.He was sworn in as a Union Minister on 30 May 2019. On 12 June 2019, Muraleedharan was appointed Government Deputy Chief Whip in the Rajya Sabha. Muraleedharan shifted his activities to the RSS at Kozhikode and became a full-time worker of ABVP. He quit his job later and was elected as the State Organizing Secretary of ABVP in 1983 at the age of 25. From 1987 to 1990, he also held the additional responsibility as All India Secretary of ABVP. During his 11 years tenure (1983–1994) as the State Organising Secretary, he worked closely with K.N. Govindacharya and Dattatraya Hosabale, who were then the successive South Zone Organising Secretaries of the ABVP. The ABVP team during 1983–1994 at the state and national level had leaders including Ananth Kumar (Karnataka), Sushil Modi (Bihar), Jagat Prakash Nadda, (Himachal Pradesh), Muraleedhara Rao (Rajasthan), Harendra Kumar (Former All India General Secretary), Om Prakash Kohli (All India President), Professor Late Bal Apte, (All India President), Vinod Tawde and Chandrakant Patil (All India General Secretaries). Muraleedharan left for Mumbai when he was appointed All India General Secretary of ABVP for the term 1994–1996. Muraleedharan returned to Kerala in 1997 on a research project of Khadi and Village Industries Commission at Trivandrum.
