M. M. Rajendran

Moberly Manoah Rajendran (12 April 1935 – 23 December 2023) was an Indian IAS officer who became Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu and Governor of Odisha. Earlier he was a member of UNICEF's executive board and vice chairman of its program committee at New York. He was sponsored by a Tamil Nadu-based political party for the post of President of India in 2012.

Rajendran took over as Governor of Odisha in 1999 soon after the State was hit by a super cyclone of unprecedented severity and was given the mandate by the prime minister to guide the State Government in its relief and rehabilitation work which earned the praise of the people of Odisha and the prime minister, who recognising his leadership, dissolved the Central Cabinet Committee earlier set up by him to coordinate the relief work. Realising that most of the 10,000 lives lost in the coastal areas could have been saved if only there were good shelters along the coast, he was instrumental in getting shelters built all along the coast, with the help of organizations such as German Red Cross, Ramakrishna Mission, Syrian church and many more and emergency procedures with community participation in Disaster Relief put in place when he was Governor of Odisha. These measures, followed by the State even after his departure, were of immense benefit to the people of Odisha in subsequent natural calamities, exemplified by the thousands of lives saved when Cyclones Fani in 2019 and more recently by Yaas in May 2021, hit Odisha.

Recipient of several Lifetime Achievement Awards including the Mahatma Gandhi Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 from the Gandhi World Foundation celebrating 150 years of the Mahatma. He was also conferred the Honorary Lifetime Membership of the Rotary International in 2001. Rajendran died on 23 December 2023, at the age of 88.