NDA’s Radhakrishnan elected as 15th Vice President of India

• NDA nominee C.P. Radhakrishnan was elected as the 15th Vice President of India on September 9, bagging 452 votes against Opposition nominee and former Supreme Court judge B. Sudershan Reddy’s 300 votes.

• The 67-year-old Radhakrishnan succeeds Jagdeep Dhankhar, who suddenly resigned as Vice President on July 21 almost two years before his term was to end. He is the third leader from Tamil Nadu to occupy the coveted post.

The electoral college

• As per Article 66 of the Constitution of India, the Vice President is elected by the members of the electoral college consisting of the members of both Houses of Parliament in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. 

• The electoral college for the Vice Presidential election comprises 233 elected members of the Rajya Sabha, 12 nominated members of the Rajya Sabha and 543 members of the Lok Sabha.

• The present strength of the electoral college is 781 as six seats are vacant in the Rajya Sabha and one in the Lok Sabha.

• Announcing the result of the vice presidential election, Rajya Sabha Secretary General and Returning Officer P.C. Mody said 767 MPs out of 781 cast their votes with a total turnout of 98.2 per cent. 

• He said 752 ballots were valid and 15 were invalid, bringing down the required majority of first preference votes to 377.

Radhakrishnan secures 452 votes

• The victory of Radhakrishnan, a seasoned politician from Tamil Nadu having an RSS background and decades-long stint first in the Jana Sangh and then the BJP, was a foregone conclusion due to the ruling alliance’s numerical edge.

• The extent of his victory margin is a setback to the Opposition, which had claimed all its 315 MPs remained united in the election and voted for Reddy.

• Radhakrishnan’s margin was bigger than expected. The BJP-led NDA had on paper 427 MPs in its alliance, with the YSR Congress also extending the support of its 11 MPs to its candidate. Some MPs representing smaller parties also backed Radhakrishnan.

• While Radhakrishnan received 60 per cent of the total valid votes polled, his predecessor Jagdeep Dhankhar had won by a huge margin in the 2022 election by securing 74.36 per cent of total valid votes polled. Dhankhar had bagged 528 votes out of total 710 valid votes polled.

Who is C.P. Radhakrishnan?

• Born on October 20, 1957, at Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, Chandrapuram Ponnusamy 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.

• In 1996, Radhakrishnan was appointed secretary of the BJP in Tamil Nadu. 

• He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time from Coimbatore in 1998. He was re-elected in 1999.

• During his tenure as an MP, he served as the chairman and member of various parliamentary committees.

• Between 2004 and 2007, Radhakrishnan served as the Tamil Nadu BJP president.

• In 2004, he addressed the UN General Assembly as part of the Parliamentary Delegation.  

• From 2020 to 2022, he was the all-India in-charge of the BJP for Kerala.

• An avid sportsperson, Radhakrishnan was a college champion in table tennis and a long-distance runner. He also enjoys cricket and volleyball. 

• He was made the Jharkhand Governor in February 2023 and then shifted to Maharashtra in 2024.

• He was sworn in as the Governor of Maharashtra on July 31, 2024. Prior to this, he served as the governor of Jharkhand for nearly one-and-a-half years.

• While serving as Jharkhand Governor, he was also given additional charge as the Governor of Telangana and the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)