DC Edit |South vs South in V-P Polls

The vice-presidential election has entered the crucial phase with the INIDA bloc naming former Supreme Court judge and venerable jurist B. Sudershan Reddy as its candidate. He will be taking on veteran RSS pracharak and BJP leader C.P. Radhakrishnan in an election in which the NDA candidate’s victory is a foregone conclusion given the power equations in the electoral college comprising the members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

Retired Justice Sudershan Reddy, 79, has an unblemished record as a jurist and is held in high esteem by the legal fraternity. By and large, he represents the plural, secular, liberal values the INDIA bloc claims to uphold and hence fits into its scheme of things. Having retired from the Supreme court 14 years ago, he doesn’t suffer from the stigma carried by some of his fellow jurists that they occupied some position of power or the other without having observed a cooling period after leaving the high judicial office.

The candidacy of Mr Radhakrishnan was interpreted as a shrewd move by the ruling NDA as it could have put the Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK, a major constituent of the Opposition INDIA bloc, in an uncomfortable position for it would mean going against a person from the state. But DMK president and chief minister M.K. Stalin put an end to all such speculation and endorsed former Justice Reddy. Mr Stalin has been battling the saffron alliance ever since he came to power in the 2021 elections knowing fully well that the BJP has its eyes set on the state. Though his immediate political rival is the AIADMK, he has been positioning himself as a champion of Dravidian model that is locked in an uncompromising battle against the Hindutva politics. The machinations of governor R.N. Ravi have given him enough room to play up the Dravidian versus Hindutva narrative quite effectively. In such a situation, opposition to Mr Radhakrishnan will add legitimacy to his Dravidian politics.

Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party president N. Chandrababu Naidu, on the other hand, also lost no time announcing his support to the NDA candidate instead of backing a fellow Telugu.

It’s politics first for the parties, and rightly indeed.