How will Radhakrishnan conduct Rajya Sabha proceedings? Opposition waits with cautious optimism

With NDA nominee CP Radhakrishnan elected as the new Vice President, on Tuesday (September 9), the Opposition will now be waiting with cautious optimism to see how he conducts the proceedings of Rajya Sabha as its ex-officio Chairman.

Radhakrishnan takes over from Jagdeep Dhankhar, whose sudden resignation from office on July 21 necessitated Tuesday’s election. Radhakrishnan’s ascent to the country’s second-highest constitutional office from the Raj Bhawan of Maharashtra will give the ruling BJP boasting rights, considering that he polled at least 30 votes more than the official strength of the NDA coalition that backed his candidature against the ‘united’ Opposition’s Justice B Sudershan Reddy.

15 votes declared invalid

The victory, however, also comes shrouded in suspicions of Radhakrishnan’s backers encouraging cross-voting by members of the rival camp and that too at a time when the Opposition has been accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of enjoying a third consecutive stint in power because of “vote chori” (vote theft).

Also read: CP Radhakrishnan elected India’s new Vice-President

Radhakrishnan secured 452 of the 767 total votes cast in Tuesday’s election. In a bizarre re-run of the 2022 VP polls, 15 votes were once again declared invalid, bringing the majority mark down to 377 votes. Reddy, who had entered the vice presidential contest with the assurance of securing the votes of not just the 308 MPs of the INDIA bloc but also an additional 17 votes from the AAP (11), Azad Samaj Party’s Chandrashekhar Azad, AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi and four independent MPs, ended up with just 300 votes.

Sources in the Congress party, which had convinced other INDIA bloc outfits to back Reddy’s candidature, conceded to The Federal that even assuming that all 15 votes that were declared invalid were of Opposition MPs, their nominee still polled 10 votes less than they had accounted for. “Of course cross-voting has happened and we have some obvious suspects too but then what will pointing fingers get us now,” a senior Congress MP closely involved with Reddy’s election campaign said, adding that the BJP had “proved once again that vote chori is in its character; they do it even when they know they can win without it”.

With the election done and dusted, the Opposition is now bracing itself for what Vice President Radhakrishnan, in his ex-officio role as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, would be like. For the Opposition, the two-year stint that Radhakrishnan’s predecessor Dhankhar enjoyed in office had been a perpetually frustrating struggle to have its voice heard in Rajya Sabha.

Radhakrishnan ‘unknown commodity’

Dhankhar’s abrupt exit and his subsequent self-inflicted maunvrat (vow of silence) and disappearance from public eye had turned the very Opposition MPs who not long ago demanded his impeachment comically charitable and overtly concerned towards him. Yet, it is difficult to say if this newfound charitable disposition of the Opposition will also be passed on to Radhakrishnan when he starts his innings as Rajya Sabha Chairman in Parliament’s winter session this December.

Also read: CP Radhakrishnan: Tiruppur’s quiet leader rises as India's Vice-President

Dhankhar, despite his evidently partisan conduct of House proceedings and habitually brusque dismissal of the Opposition’s requests for debates on critical issues or even brief interventions, enjoyed a personal rapport with many INDIA bloc leaders due to his past association with them.

Radhakrishnan, in that aspect, is largely an ‘unknown commodity’ for most floor leaders and senior MPs from the Opposition’s side given his lacklustre electoral background, low key political profile and lack of personal engagement with leaders beyond the BJP. Even though he served as Governor of important states like Telangana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra for varying periods, Opposition leaders from these states told The Federal that he rarely made an effort to cultivate political relationships beyond what was required of the office he held.

Opposition leaders who have known Radhakrishnan from his gubernatorial stints do concede that he is “always civil” and “rarely confrontational”. The praise, however, is almost instantly qualified with caveats alluding to his long association with the BJP’s ideological wellspring, the RSS.

Issue of notice for removal of Justice Shekhar Yadav

A senior Opposition MP from Maharashtra, Radhakrishnan’s last gubernatorial halt before his surprise elevation as Vice President, told The Federal, unlike Dhankhar, who had been with the Janata Dal, the Congress and the BJP during his political career and “had a commitment to the BJP which was more opportunistic than ideological”, the VP-elect is “a dyed-in-wool Sangh man but of a more traditionalist variety”.

“If you look at Sangh members from a certain time period of the past, you will see that despite their ideological commitment to Hindutva, very few make a public display of the deeply communal bile they carry. They are always very polite, very civil and will do their usual Muslim bashing only in a certain kind of crowd; otherwise they will talk about scriptures, culture, values and all that. Radhakrishnan may not be very old in age (he is 67 years old) but he was initiated into the Sangh as a teenager and so he has imbibed that Sangh tradition,” the Maharashtra MP said.

Another Opposition MP, who was also elected to the 13th Lok Sabha along with Radhakrishnan (his second and last stint as MP), told The Federal, “after his term in Lok Sabha, I have met him only socially on some occasions and always found him to be very courteous but then while he may not be like the current crop of BJP members or those like Dhankhar or even Himanta Biswa Sarma who were new converts and needed to prove to Modi that they could be trusted, I highly doubt that he will go against anything that the government wants him to do as Chairman... maybe (he will act) more like Venkaiah Naidu than Dhankhar in the way he conducts the House; some show of giving the Opposition space but at the end of the day he will let the government have its way (sic).”

A section of Opposition leaders believe that Radhakrishnan’s neutrality will be tested soon after Parliament convenes for its winter session as the INDIA bloc MPs, especially from the Congress party, are set to press for the Chairman’s decision on the notice for removal of Allahabad High Court’s Justice Shekhar Yadav. The notice had been signed and submitted by Opposition MPs to Dhankhar last December, days after Justice Yadav made communal remarks against Muslims while speaking at an event organised by the VHP.

Dhankhar, however, delayed giving any ruling on the notice during his term. Hours before quitting as VP, Dhankhar had indicated to the Rajya Sabha his willingness to admit another notice signed by the Opposition seeking the removal of Justice Yashwant Verma – a move many believe hastened his unceremonious exit from office as the government purportedly didn’t want the Opposition’s notice admitted. On the notice against Justice Yadav, though, Dhankhar merely said he would inform the House of his decision soon. Hours later, Dhankhar resigned.

Dhankhar’s moves to muzzle Opposition

Opposition MPs such as Jairam Ramesh have, since, claimed that Dhankhar was on the verge of admitting the notice seeking Justice Yadav’s removal when he suddenly resigned citing medical grounds. The notice continues to await a decision from the Rajya Sabha Chairman; a responsibility that will now fall on Radhakrishnan.

“Of course we will press for a ruling as soon as the winter session starts and how he (Radhakrishnan) responds will tell us all we need to know about the way he plans to conduct the proceedings; whether he will be partisan like his predecessor or will follow the Constitution and run the House as a neutral presiding officer,” a Congress MP told The Federal.

Another Opposition MP recalled that Dhankhar, as Rajya Sabha Chairman, had in March this year directed Parliament’s Ethics Committee, headed by BJP MP Ghanshyam Tiwari, to “evolve a mechanism and fresh guidelines for members” with regard to issues over which members can invoke breach of privilege. Dhankhar’s direction had come after he rejected the Opposition’s notice of breach of privilege against Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who Jairam Ramesh had accused of making misleading and defamatory statements on the floor of the House against Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi.

While rejecting the Opposition’s notice, Dhankhar had directed Tiwari to revisit a report submitted to Parliament in 1998 by Congress veteran late SB Chavan on expanding and revamping the scope and powers of the Ethics Committee of Rajya Sabha. Slamming the Opposition for its notice against Shah, Dhankhar had said he would not allow the Rajya Sabha to become a “platform to ruin reputations of people,” and tasked the Tiwari led panel to “look into the SB Chavan report on ethics and take note of intervening situations, mostly brought about by technological developments and social media and evolve a mechanism, fresh guidelines for members for adherence.”

Many in the INDIA bloc believed Dhankhar’s directions were meant to muzzle the Opposition further. While Tiwari had informed the Rajya Sabha that the Ethics Committee had “started working on the directions given by the Chair”, nothing further has been heard on the matter since Dhankhar’s sudden resignation.

“Let us wait and see what happens on that front. Dhankhar’s directions to the Ethics Committee were explicitly meant to silence the Opposition further so I believe that is still on the table. Let’s see how the new Chairman deals with the issue,” a Congress Rajya Sabha MP said.