Amit Shah during a meeting with CP Radhakrishnan
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: In a high-stakes move ahead of the Vice-Presidential election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday designated Maharashtra Governor Chandrapuram Ponnusamy Radhakrishnan as the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) candidate for the country’s second-highest constitutional post. The decision was taken at a meeting of the party’s Parliamentary Board which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Radhakrishnan has served as the Governor of Jharkhand and Telangana prior to this, and has been a Lok Sabha MP from Coimbatore twice on BJP's ticket. His candidature is likely to serve the BJP in Tamil Nadu, where the BJP is yet to win big, as well as the larger South, where the BJP seeks to increase its footprint.
The announcement was made by party president J P Nadda after the meeting, who also said that the decision came after deliberations with both the allies and opposition parties. “We took the decision after extensive discussions with our NDA partners. The Opposition has said that they will support the nominee depending on who the candidate is. We are hopeful that the VP will be elected by consensus,” Nadda told reporters after the meeting.
Nadda also said that the NDA seeks to secure a unanimous election, and that outreach to opposition groups is underway to seek broader consensus for the polls.
The BJP will also hold a meeting of its key NDA allies on Tuesday where the PM will make a formal announcement to the alliance partners. The nomination is set to be a show of strength with several ruling party as well as alliance chief ministers expected to join.
The Vice-Presidential election is scheduled for September 9, with August 21 being the final date for nominations.
The party’s Parliamentary Board, it’s highest decision making body, has 11 members including home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, OBC Morcha chairman K Laxman, former Karnataka CM BS Yedyurappa, Sarbananda Sonowal, among others.
The polls have been necessitated by the unexpected exit of Jagdeep Dhankar, which took place on the first day of the Monsoon Session. Congress leaders indicated that while the move was unexpected, the fallout was inevitable as Dhankar has been taking decisions unilaterally for a while, angering the BJP top brass. The final straw came when he allowed for a motion of impeachment against Justice Yashwant Verma by the Opposition.