C. P. Radhakrishnan (born 4 May 1957) is an Indian politician who is the 10th and current

Governor of Jharkhand The governor of Jharkhand is a nominal head of the Indian state of Jharkhand and permanent representative of president of India. The governor is appointed by the president of India for a five-year term. Raj Bhavan in Ranchi serves as the offici ...

since 2023. He was the member of

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...

(BJP) and was elected to the

Lok Sabha The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-past ...

twice from

Coimbatore Coimbatore, also spelt as Koyamputhur (), sometimes shortened as Kovai (), is one of the major metropolitan cities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on the banks of the Noyyal River and surrounded by the Western Ghats. Coimbato ...

. He was also the former state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

. Till recently he was the National Executive Member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and was appointed the Kerala BJP Prabhari (In-Charge) by the party's high command. He was Chairman of the All India Coir Board from 2016 to 2019, which comes under the

Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises is the ministry in the Government of India. It is the apex executive body for the formulation and administration of rules, regulations and laws relating to micro, small and medium enterprises ...

(MSME).

Political career

Radhakrishnan was a two-time member of the

. He won on a BJP ticket in the

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

and

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

general elections in the aftermath of the

1998 Coimbatore bombings The 1998 Coimbatore bombings occurred on Saturday, 14 February 1998, in the city of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. A total of 58 people were killed and over 200 injured in the 12 bomb attacks in 11 places, all within a radius. The explosives used ...

. Radhakrishnan won by a margin of over 150,000 votes in 1998 and a margin of 55,000 in the 1999 elections. In 1999, he stated that voters in Coimbatore did not need convincing to vote for the BJP. In 2004, he stated that the BJP did not stab any party in the back or cause rifts in ties with other parties. He was among state leaders who worked on forming alliances in 2004 after the

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; DMK) is a political party based in the state of Tamil Nadu where it is currently the ruling party having a comfortable majority without coalition support and the union territory of Puducherry where it is curre ...

ended its ties with the BJP-led

National Democratic Alliance National Democratic Alliance (NDA) () is a Centre-right politics, centre-right to Right-wing politics, right-wing and Conservatism, conservative Indian big tent political alliance led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was foun ...

. Radhakrishnan later worked with the state unit to forge ties with the

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; AIADMK) is an Indian regional political party with great influence in the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It is a Dravidian party founded by the former chief mini ...

for the

2004 elections 4 (four) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures. In mathematics Four is the smallest c ...

. In 2012, Radhakrishnan courted arrest in

Mettupalayam Mettupalayam may refer to: * Mettupalayam, Coimbatore Mettupalayam is a municipality town and taluk of the Coimbatore district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the second largest town in the Coimbatore District. It's located to the North ...

for protesting inaction against culprits who had assaulted a

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( ; , , ) is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation. The RSS is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar (Hindi for "Sangh family" ...

activist. He is among the senior-most and respected leaders of the BJP from the south and Tamil Nadu and has been associated with the organisation right from RSS and Jan Sangh from the age of 16 from 1973 for 48 years. In 2014, he was named the BJP candidate for Lok Sabha from Coimbatore Constituency and without the alliance of the two big parties of Tamil Nadu, the DMK and the AIADMK, he secured second place with over 3,89,000 votes, the highest among the Tamil Nadu BJP candidates, losing by the smallest margin among all candidates in Tamil Nadu. He was named the party's candidate once again for the

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

election from Coimbatore.

Electoral Performances

External links

Official biographical sketch on the Parliament of India website
(12th Lok Sabha)

(13th Lok Sabha)

References

, - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Radhakrishnan, C. P. India MPs 1999–2004 India MPs 1998–1999 Politicians from Coimbatore 1957 births Living people National Democratic Alliance candidates in the 2014 Indian general election Bharatiya Janata Party politicians from Tamil Nadu