Opposition's Vice President candidate to be announced on Tuesday; more than two names under consideration

NEW DELHI: The opposition alliance’s candidate for the Vice President election is likely to be announced on Tuesday. A decision on this was reached on Monday in the meeting of the INDIA bloc. More than two names were discussed in the meeting. Earlier, reports suggested that Tiruchi Siva, DMK's Rajya Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu, might be the candidate. The NDA’s candidate, C.P. Radhakrishnan, is also from Tamil Nadu.

It was BJP national president J.P. Nadda who announced the name of C.P. Radhakrishnan after the BJP parliamentary meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday. At present, Radhakrishnan is serving as the Governor of Maharashtra. The Vice President election became necessary following the resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar. The election is scheduled for September 9.

Radhakrishnan belongs to the powerful Gounder community, which comes under the OBC category in Tamil Nadu. He hails from Tiruppur. He has been elected to the Lok Sabha twice from the Coimbatore constituency.

Chandrapuram Ponnuswamy Radhakrishnan, commonly known as C.P. Radhakrishnan, was born in Tiruppur on October 20, 1957. He began his public life as a volunteer of the RSS. In 1974, he became a member of the Tamil Nadu executive committee of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. In 1996, he became the secretary of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit.