Opposition VP pick Reddy to hold deliberations with Cong, SP leaders in Lucknow

Lucknow: Opposition vice presidential candidate B Sudershan Reddy will on Tuesday hold deliberations here with leaders of the Congress and Samajwadi Party, two key INDIA bloc constituents. Reddy, a former Supreme Court judge, was welcomed at the airport here this morning by a number of Congress and SP workers waving their party flags. UP Congress president Ajay Rai, state in-charge Avinash Pande and senior leader Pramod Tiwari, among others, received Reddy. "I have come here to meet the veteran leaders of political parties. I'll be meeting the SP president (Akhilesh Yadav) and the Congress president (Ajay Rai) will be with me," Reddy told PTI Videos.

On his criticism by ruling NDA leaders, Reddy said, "I have said enough about it and do not wish to talk." Home Minister Amit Shah had accused Reddy of "supporting" Naxalism and had claimed that Left Wing Extremism would have ended by 2020 in the absence of the Salwa Judum judgement. Reddy along with Justice S S Nijjar was part of an apex court bench that had in July 2011 ordered the disbanding of Salwa Judum, ruling that using tribal youths as Special Police Officers in the fight against Maoist insurgents was illegal and unconstitutional. During his visit, Reddy is also expected to address a joint press conference with Yadav later in the day. The stage is set for a direct contest between ruling NDA nominee C P Radhakrishnan and joint opposition candidate Reddy for the September 9 vice-presidential election, in what is being described as a "south versus south" battle as both hail from south India. While Radhakrishnan is a BJP veteran from Tamil Nadu, Reddy is a former Supreme Court judge who hails from Telangana. The vice-presidential poll, necessitated by the sudden resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar recently, has been described by the opposition as an ideological battle, even as the numbers are stacked in favour of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Reddy (79), who retired from the apex court in July 2011, is a veteran jurist known for several landmark judgments criticising the then Union government for showing slackness in probing blackmoney cases. Radhakrishnan (67) served as a two-term member of the Lok Sabha from Coimbatore during the tenure of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and later, went on to lead the saffron party in Tamil Nadu.