New Delhi: The BJP on Sunday announced Maharashtra Governor and veteran RSS colleague C P Radhakrishnan as the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) candidate for the vice-presidential election.
BJP chief J P Nadda declared Radhakrishnan’s name after the party’s Parliamentary Board approved the candidature. Sixty-eight-year-old Radhakrishnan, born in Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, was sworn in as the Governor of Maharashtra last year.
With the nomination of a Tamil Nadu-born leader for the second-highest constitutional post, political observers say the BJP may have put Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK in a difficult position.
The DMK is part of the opposition INDIA alliance, which had earlier decided to field a joint non-political candidate for the vice-president’s post.
“We will talk to the opposition. We should also take their support so that together we can ensure an unopposed election for the post of Vice President. As we said earlier, we have been in touch with them, and our senior leaders will continue to engage,” Nadda said, adding that all NDA allies have extended support to Radhakrishnan.
Starting as an RSS swayamsevak, Radhakrishnan became a state executive committee member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1974. He was appointed secretary of the BJP in Tamil Nadu in 1996 and went on to win the Lok Sabha seat from Coimbatore in 1998 and again in 1999.
During his tenure in Parliament, he chaired the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Textile Industry and was part of the Public Sector Undertakings Committee, the Finance Consultative Committee, and the special committee probing the stock exchange scam.
