NDA nominee C P Radhakrishnan defeats Oppn’s Reddy; elected Vice President of India

STATE TIMES NEWS

NEW DELHI: NDA candidate C P Radhakrishnan won the vice presidential election on Tuesday by bagging 452 votes, while opposition candidate B Sudershan Reddy polled 300 votes, Returning Officer P C Mody said.
The vote tally suggested some cross-voting in favour of Radhakrishnan. BJP leaders claimed that at least 15 opposition members voted for the NDA nominee. Earlier, the Congress had claimed that the opposition stood united with all of its 315 MPs turning up to vote in the vice presidential polls.
A total of 767 MPs cast their ballot in a turnout of 98.2 per cent, of which 752 were valid and 15 votes were deemed invalid, Mody said. One postal ballot was cancelled as the MP declined to cast the vote.
Mody said Radhakrishnan secured 452 first preference votes as against 300 for Reddy.
“I declare C P Radhakrishnan elected to the post of Vice President of India and the results will be communicated to the Election Commission,” Mody said.
Radhakrishnan would be India’s 15th vice president when he is sworn in to the post.
The poll was necessitated by the sudden resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar on July 21.
The electoral college for the vice presidential election comprises a total of 788 members – 245 from the Rajya Sabha and 543 from the Lok Sabha. The 12 nominated members of the Rajya Sabha are also eligible to vote in the election.
The present strength of the electoral college is 781 as six seats are vacant in the Rajya Sabha and one in the Lok Sabha.
Strongly rooted in the RSS and the BJP, Chandrapuram Ponnusamy Radhakrishnan, is seen as a soft-spoken and non-confrontational leader, the 67-year-old Radhakrishnan succeeds Jagdeep Dhankhar, who resigned as vice president on July 21, taking everyone by surprise. He is the third leader from Tamil Nadu to occupy the coveted post.
Described as a ‘Pachai Tamizhan’ (true-blue Tamil) by well-wishers, Radhakrishnan was serving as the Governor of Maharashtra when he was named as the vice presidential nominee of the BJP-led NDA.
A two-term member of the Lok Sabha from Coimbatore during the tenure of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Radhakrishnan came close to becoming a Union minister, but had to lose out to fellow Tamilan Pon Radhakrishnan in 1998 after some confusion over his name by the then floor managers of the BJP. Radhakrishnan joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a teenager and rose through the ranks in the organisation and later in the BJP, gaining acceptability in the party and the state.
A member of the socially dominant and economically prosperous Kongu Vellalar Gounder community, he became the secretary of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit in 1996 and served as the party’s state unit president between 2003 and 2006.
An avid sportsperson, Radhakrishnan was a college champion in table tennis and a long-distance runner. He also enjoys cricket and volleyball.
Radhakrishnan is considered an untainted leader with rich political and administrative experience for the vice president’s office and this would also prove useful as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
The Tamil Nadu leader is said to be held in high esteem across party lines in his state, resulting in the BJP giving him multiple gubernatorial assignments in Jharkhand, Telangana, Maharashtra and Puducherry.
Radhakrishnan’s candidature also seeks to disarm the Opposition of a key political narrative, as he is the first OBC leader from South India to be named for the vice-president’s office.
An official profile circulated by the NDA projects Radhakrishnan as a leader who is eminent, knowledgeable and untainted by any legal accusations.
Radhakrishnan’s political innings started with his association with organisations such as the RSS and the Jan Sangh.
He took up student politics and has since used politics as a medium to serve the people.
Radhakrishnan’s track record of holding electoral, organisational and constitutional responsibilities shows that he is set to create history as the vice president of India.
He was sworn in as the governor of Maharashtra on July 31, 2024. Before this, he served as the governor of Jharkhand for nearly one-and-a-half years.
Born on October 20, 1957, at Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, Radhakrishnan has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.
Starting as an RSS swayamsevak at the age of 16, he became a state executive committee member of the Bharatiya Janasangh in 1974.
Between 2004 and 2007, Radhakrishnan served as the Tamil Nadu BJP president. In this role, he undertook a 19,000-km ‘Rath Yatra’ that lasted for 93 days.
The Yatra was organised to highlight his demands for the linking of all Indian rivers, eradicating terrorism, implementing a uniform civil code, removing untouchability and combating the menace of narcotic drugs, some of the key planks of the BJP and the RSS.