Opposition vice presidential candidate and former Supreme Court judge B Sudershan Reddy
PTI Photo
Lucknow: Opposition vice presidential candidate B Sudershan Reddy will on Tuesday hold deliberations here with leaders of the Congress and Samajwadi Party, two key INDIA bloc constituents.
Reddy, a former Supreme Court judge, was welcomed at the airport here this morning by a number of Congress and SP workers waving their party flags.
UP Congress president Ajay Rai, state in-charge Avinash Pande and senior leader Pramod Tiwari, among others, received Reddy.
Reddy is expected to address a joint press conference with Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav later in the day.
The stage is set for a direct contest between ruling NDA nominee C P Radhakrishnan and joint opposition candidate Reddy for the September 9 vice-presidential election, in what is being described as a "south versus south" battle as both hail from south India.
While Radhakrishnan is a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) veteran from Tamil Nadu, Reddy is a former Supreme Court judge who hails from Telangana.
The vice-presidential poll, necessitated by the sudden resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar recently, has been described by the opposition as an ideological battle, even as the numbers are stacked in favour of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Reddy (79), who retired from the apex court in July 2011, is a veteran jurist known for several landmark judgments criticising the then Union government for showing slackness in probing blackmoney cases. He had also declared Salwa Judum, appointed by the Chhattisgarh government, as unconstitutional.
Radhakrishnan (67) served as a two-term member of the Lok Sabha from Coimbatore during the tenure of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and later, went on to lead the saffron party in Tamil Nadu.