Sudershan Reddy as V-P candidate: What's behind INDIA Bloc's counter choice?

Pitching the September 9 vice-presidential polls as an “ideological battle”, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday, August 19, announced former Supreme Court judge, Justice B. Sudershan Reddy, as the candidate of a “united Opposition” against Maharashtra Governor CP Radhakrishnan, the nominee of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition.

Reddy’s candidature has been endorsed by over 20 Opposition parties, including Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is no longer part of the Opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc.

By pitting the widely respected jurist, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2011, against the BJP’s Radhakrishnan, the INDIA Bloc hopes to stay on course with its political narrative against alleged assaults on the Constitution and constitutional institutions, including the judiciary, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Reddy's choice to stump Telugu parties?

Simultaneously, Reddy’s candidature is also a clever move by the Congress to put NDA constituents Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and JanaSena Party of N. Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan, respectively, as well as the ‘unaligned’ YSR Congress of Jagan Mohan Reddy and Bharat Rashtra Samithi of K. Chandrasekhar Rao, from the Telugu-speaking states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, in a political bind.

Mamata Banerjee is learnt to have made her support to a joint Opposition candidate incumbent on two pre-conditions – that the nominee is not a career politician and that the INDIA bloc shouldn’t turn the V-P polls into a ‘Tamil versus Tamil’ contest.

With Reddy in the race, assuming that his nomination papers will pass scrutiny, the INDIA Bloc and its constituents from Tamil Nadu in particular, can breathe a little easy even though a favourable result for Radhakrishnan in the polls is a foregone conclusion, given the NDA’s clear majority in the Electoral College.

Also read: Justice Sudershan Reddy as V-P candidate: Why Telugu parties are in a bind

BJP's Tamil ploy blunted

With Reddy in the ring, the possibility of the BJP invoking Tamil pride and slamming Opposition outfits from the southern state for not endorsing Radhakrishnan, a fellow Tamil, has been blunted and is unlikely to give any anxious moments to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and its allies in the state bound for elections next year.

For if the BJP invokes Tamil pride, the Opposition can hit back, raising the issue of Telugu pride and questioning the TDP, JanaSena, and the saffron party whether their opposition to Reddy should be construed as an affront to the two Telugu-speaking states. That's a charge Naidu, Pawan Kalyan and Jagan Reddy, all leaders who have endorsed Radhakrishnan's candidature, would prefer to avoid.

Reddy was not first choice

Reddy, however, wasn’t the Opposition’s first choice. The BJP’s decision to field Radhakrishnan had triggered a push from INDIA Bloc’s DMK for a Tamilian to be picked by the Opposition too. The DMK, sources said, had suggested senior Rajya Sabha MP Tiruchi Siva as a potential ‘united Opposition’ candidate.

Also read: B Sudershan Reddy: A judge who always kept politics out of judiciary

The DMK had made it clear that it would not support Radhakrishnan, a man with a well-known RSS background, under any circumstances, but with Assembly polls due in Tamil Nadu next year, the party was also wary of the BJP invoking Tamil pride and criticising Chief Minister MK Stalin for not having his party rally behind a fellow Tamilian.

To counter such an attempt by the BJP, sources say the DMK had suggested the candidature of Siva, a seasoned parliamentarian with cordial cross-party relations.

Congress didn't want another 2022 with Mamata

The DMK’s push for Siva, however, met with immediate resistance from Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). The Bengal chief minister, who of late has rarely been readily accepting of any suggestion made by her INDIA partners, is learnt to have made her support to a joint Opposition candidate incumbent on two pre-conditions – that the nominee is not a career politician and that the INDIA bloc shouldn’t turn the V-P polls into a ‘Tamil versus Tamil’ contest. Banerjee’s conditions effectively elbowed not just Siva but even the apolitical Indian Space Research Organisation scientist Mylswamy Annadurai out of contention.

Also read: Justice (retd) B Sudershan Reddy: Who is the Opposition's V-P poll candidate?

The Congress did not want a repeat of the embarrassment it faced during the 2022 V-P polls when an angry Banerjee refused to endorse Congress leader and joint Opposition candidate Margaret Alva against the NDA’s then nominee Jagdeep Dhankhar and directed her party MPs to abstain from voting.

Banerjee’s decision had left the Congress jilted and embarrassed in equal measure, as the party had felt that the Trinamool would eventually back the Opposition candidate, as Dhankhar, during his stint as Bengal governor, had shared a deeply acrimonious relationship with Banerjee’s government.

Also read: Why CP Radhakrishnan ticked many boxes as NDA's V-P candidate

With the last date of filing nominations for the VP polls just three days away, Banerjee had yet again put her Opposition colleagues in a spot of bother. Sources said at least two rounds of discussions between Kharge and other INDIA bloc leaders over the past two days failed to evolve a consensus on the Opposition’s choice, with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party also suggesting to the Congress president to explore the viability of picking a Dalit or backward-caste candidate from one of the Hindi belt states.

Rahul Gandhi 'highly impressed' with Reddy

The breakthrough, it is learnt, came late Monday, August 18, when Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who is away in Bihar on his ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’, suggested Reddy’s name to the Congress president. Congress sources said, Rahul was “highly impressed” with Reddy’s work during the latter’s stint as head of the expert group set up by the Congress’s Telangana government to evaluate and submit a report on the state’s Social, Economic, Educational, Employment, Political and Caste (SEEEPC) survey. Rahul has been asserting that the “Telangana model” for caste survey must be replicated nationwide.

Also read: OBCs will benefit if Justice Reddy becomes Vice President, says Revanth Reddy

Things moved briskly after Rahul’s suggestion as Kharge immediately reached out to other Opposition leaders. The Left parties readily endorsed Reddy’s candidature while the TMC, which found both its conditions fulfilled, acquiesced grudgingly.

Around noon on Monday, a battery of Opposition leaders, including Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) chief Sharad Pawar, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary MA Baby, TMC MPs Derek O’Brien and Satabdi Roy, the DMK’s Siva and Kanimozhi, Samajwadi Party MP Dharmendra Yadav, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’s Sanjay Raut among others, arrived at Kharge’s residence to finalise the name of the Opposition’s candidate.

Reddy’s name was endorsed, and Kharge made the announcement, calling the former Supreme Court judge “a consistent and courageous champion of social, economic and political justice… a pro-poor man” whose judgments “favoured the poor and protected the Constitution and fundamental rights”.

“The vice-presidential contest is an ideological battle and all the Opposition parties have unanimously nominated B. Sudershan Reddy garu,” Kharge said, adding that the candidate “reflects fully the values that shaped our country’s freedom movement so profoundly and the values on which our country’s Constitution and democracy have been anchored; all these values are under assault and therefore, our collective and determined resolve to fight this election”.

Kharge said Reddy, who will be introduced to the Opposition’s MPs on Wednesday, August 20, in the Central Hall of the old Parliament building, will file his nomination for the election the following day, August 21, the last date for filing nominations.

O’Brien told reporters that the AAP, though it was not present at the Opposition’s presser, was “on board” the decision to field Reddy.

Radhakrishnan, meanwhile, is expected to file his nomination on Wednesday.