Chennai: All three immediate family members of lottery baron Santiago Martin who contested the April 23 Assembly elections to Tamil Nadu and Puducherry have won, in a significant development that shows how the family has entrenched itself into the political system.
While Martin's wife Leema Rose won from Lalgudi in Tiruchirapalli district as AIADMK candidate, the couple's son-in-law and TVK leader Aadhav Arjuna emerged victorious from Villivakkam. Their son Jose Charles Martin has entered the Puducherry Assembly from Kamaraj Nagar.
Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections 2026 | Do you know the net worth of 'Lottery King' Santiago Martin and his family?Rose and Arjuna have another distinction - they will be the first mother-in-law-son-in-law duo to have been elected to the Tamil Nadu in 35 years. In 1991, Congress' A S Ponnammal and her son-in-law AIADMK's A Subburathinam (now with DMK) were elected as MLAs from Nilakottai and Palani respectively.
This is the first time that Martin's family members are making their electoral debuts, though they have been in politics for some time.
While Rose won by a slender margin of 2,739 votes to TVK's Ku Pa Krishnan, Arjuna emerged victorious by securing 17,302 votes more than his nearest rival and former friend, Karthik Mohan of DMK. Jose Martin won from Kamaraj Nagar by a margin of 10,205 votes.
With family members in rival parties, Martin aims to secure influence in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry no matter who wins power. Future Group's estimated annual turnover is around Rs 15,000 crore.
Three family members, three parties: How lottery baron Martin wields cross-party influenceTiger Associates, linked to Martin, donated Rs 60 crore to AIADMK, and Rs 50 crore to DMK during the 2024-2025 fiscal. Martin is known to be close to the DMK's first family, and he contributed over Rs 500 crore worth of electoral bonds to the party between 2017 and 2024.
Among the three, Arjuna is the most ambitious and runs a political strategy firm, Voice of Commons.
He was associated with the DMK for years together but jumped ship to VCK after it became increasingly clear that he will not get a seat to contest the Lok Sabha polls - he had to quit the VCK as well after his frequent run-ins with the DMK did not go down well with his party chief Thol Thirumavalavan.
Arjuna then joined the fledgling TVK and has emerged as one of the key advisors to Vijay.
Martin, a OBC Christian, had befriended influential people in almost every political party that mattered in the states where his firms operate - in Tamil Nadu, he was closely associated with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and in Kerala, he had a good rapport with the Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Martin also produced a movie for which late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi wrote the script, while his donation of Rs 2 crore to Deshabimani, the CPI(M) mouthpiece in Kerala, met with opposition from within the party, forcing the then Left leadership to return the amount to the lottery baron.
Future Gaming, which still operates in 13 states where the sale of lottery tickets is legal, has over the years, diversified into real estate, hospitality, satellite television channel, and software.