PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, DM Rajnath, Others attend oather ceremony
New Delhi: Chandrapuram Ponnusami Radhakrishnan Friday took oath as the 15th Vice President of India. President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath at Rashtrapati Bhavan at around 10 am.
Radhakrishnan, 67, won the vice-presidential election on September 9, defeating the Opposition candidate B Sudershan Reddy by a margin of 152 votes. Radhakrishnan, an old-time RSS and BJP leader, secured 452 of the 752 valid votes polled, with 15 declared invalid, against Reddy’s 300.
The election was necessitated by the sudden resignation of former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar on July 21, citing health issues. Dhankhar was also in attendance at the oath-taking ceremony on Friday, making his first public appearance since his resignation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP president J P Nadda, and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla were among those who attended the programme. Former vice presidents Hamid Ansari and Venkaiah Naidu were also present at the ceremony. While Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi skipped the ceremony, Rajya Sabha LoP Mallikarjun Kharge was present.
Radhakrishnan was elected India’s 15th Vice-President on Tuesday, defeating B Sudershan Reddy by a margin of 152 votes. The outcome came as a jolt to the Opposition bloc, whose hopes of securing at least 320-plus votes appeared to have been dashed by cross-voting.
Radhakrishnan first rose to prominence in the late 1990s. He won the Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat in 1998 and 1999 with record margins for the state, establishing his credibility in western Tamil Nadu — a region historically challenging for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He later served as Tamil Nadu BJP president from 2004 to 2007 and became a member of the party’s National Executive. In February 2023, he was appointed Jharkhand’s governor and moved to Maharashtra in February 2024.
Colleagues describe him as ideologically rooted in the Sangh yet pragmatic in governance. His straightforward approach and relatively clean image distinguish him in a political landscape often fraught with rivalries and corruption scandals.
