NDA nominee C P Radhakrishnan defeats Oppn's Reddy to be 15th Vice President of India

NEW DELHI: NDA candidate CP Radhakrishnan was elected the 15th Vice-President on Tuesday as he bagged 452 votes against the opposition candidate B Sudershan Reddy’s 300, winning the contest with a bigger than expected margin, indicating cross-voting from the rival camp.

Announcing the result, Rajya Sabha Secretary General and Returning Officer PC Mody said 767 MPs cast their votes out of the total valid electors of 781.

He said 752 ballots were valid and 15 invalid, reducing the required majority of first preference votes to 377. Though Radhakrishnan’s victory was a foregone conclusion due to the ruling alliance’s numerical edge, the victory margin is a setback to the opposition.

Strongly rooted in the RSS and the BJP, Chandrapuram Ponnusamy Radhakrishnan (67) brings along a rich political and administrative experience which will prove handy in his role as the ex-officio Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha.

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.

Hours before the result, senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh had claimed that the Opposition has stood united. “All of its 315 MPs have turned up for voting,” he said. The final tally in favour of Reddy, a retired Supreme Court judge, was 300, decidedly less than expected by the opposition camp as some MPs unaligned to the two blocs had also announced their support to him.

BJP leaders were quick to claim that at least 15 opposition MPs voted in favour of Radhakrishnan. There were hints from the ruling alliance that some opposition MPs deliberately cast invalid votes.