Chandrapuram Ponnusamy Radhakrishnan, the 15th Vice President of India, is a respected name in polity and public life with more than four decades of experience. He was sworn in as the Governor of Maharashtra last year. Prior to this appointment, he served as the Governor of Jharkhand.
He is the third Tamilian to be elected to the country’s second highest post after Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and R Venkataraman. Both Radhakrishnan and Venkataraman later went on to become the first citizens of India.
Born on May 4, 1957, at Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, Radhakrishnan earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. A member of the RSS and BJP since his youth, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Coimbatore in 1998 and re-elected in the 1999 general election.
During his tenure as a Member of Parliament, he served as chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Textiles. He was also a member of the Parliamentary Committee for Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and the Consultative Committee for Finance. He was a member of the Parliamentary Special Committee investigating the Stock Exchange scam.
In 2004, Radhakrishnan addressed the UN General Assembly as part of the parliamentary delegation. He was also a member of the first Parliamentary delegation to Taiwan.
In 2016, the senior BJP leader was appointed as the chairman of the Coir Board, Kochi, a position he held for four years. Under his leadership, coir exports from India reached an all-time high of Rs 2,532 crore.
An avid sportsperson, Radhakrishnan was a college champion in table tennis and a long-distance runner. He also enjoys cricket and volleyball.
He was the Tamil Nadu BJP state president from 2004 to 2006. As the president, he took a rath yatra for 93 days, advocating the linkage of Indian rivers, eradicating untouchability, and campaigning against terrorism. He was among the BJP’s state leaders who worked on forming an alliance with the AIADMK in 2004 after the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ended its ties with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
In 2012, Radhakrishnan faced court arrest in Mettupalayam for protesting inaction against culprits who had assaulted an RSS activist.
Former Supreme Court judge B Sudershan Reddy is Opposition INDIA bloc’s candidate for the Vice Presidential poll being conducted by the Election Commission.