THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The CPM has created history by recommending the name of 21-year-old Arya Rajendran for the post of Mayor of Thiruvananthapuram. When Arya gets elected tomorrow, she will be the youngest mayor in the history of Kerala and currently in India. In 2009, Suman Kohli, the mayor of Bharatpur in Rajasthan, was 21 years old.

It was the Thiruvananthapuram district secretariat of the Marxist party that recommended her name for the post during a meeting on Friday.

''I have faced the election with confidence and courage. I am ready to shoulder any responsibility entrusted with me by my party. My dream is to take forward politics and my studies together,'' she said. Daughter of CPI(M) activist K Rajendran, an electrician by profession, and Sreelatha, a LIC agent, Arya is a B.Sc Maths second-year student at the All Saints college here.

She had won from the Mudavanmughal ward of the city Corporation, garnering 2,872 votes, 549 votes more than the rival Congress candidate. A state committee member of the Students Federation of India (SFI), she is also the state president of Balasangam, the children's wing of the Left party.

As a Mayor, her top priority would be waste management in the capital city, which has been a challenging task for her predecessors also. ''Our city is beautiful. To keep it like this, it should be free of waste. Besides a scientific waste management system, a thorough awareness is needed among people not to dump waste on the waysides,'' Arya said.

As a councillor, she wanted a family health centre in her ward and to implement programmes to reduce stress among children. Saying that her college teachers and friends were very much supportive of her political stint, Arya said she also wanted to find time to prepare for three-semester exams she had missed due to the election campaign.

An ardent fan of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in politics and superstar Mohanlal in cinema, the Mayor-designate also said she wanted to continue her studies as much as she can and to intervene in people's issues and find a solution for that. ''I am a person who grew up listening to my father saying that it is not individual, but the party which is supreme.

I will continue as an obedient party comrade,'' she added. Actor Mohanlal, whose ancestral home is located at Mudavanmugal, called and congratulatedArya, which was aired, by party news channel, 'People' on Saturday. An excited Arya thanked him for his wishes and hoped that she would live up to the expectations of all.