BJP nominates Pon Radhakrishnan for Kanyakumari LS bypoll

New Delhi/Chennai, Mar 6 (PTI) The BJP on Saturday named
senior party leader and former Union Minister Pon
Radhakrishnan as its candidate for the April 6 bypoll to the
Kanyakumari Lok Sabha constituency in Tamil Nadu.
The bypoll was necessitated due to the death of Congress
MP H Vasantha Kumar in August last year due to COVID-19.
The BJP's Central Election Committee (CEC), which met
earlier under its National President JP Nadda and attended by
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh
and Home Minister Amit Shah, approved the candidature of
Radhakrishnan, the party announced in a statement in Delhi.
The BJP had on late Friday night, clinched its seat-
sharing deal with its southern ally AIADMK for the April 6
Assembly polls in the state where the latter, the lead
partner, allocated 20 seats to the saffron party, besides the
Kanyakumari parliamentary segment, besides extending its full
support to the candidate.
Radhakrishnan had won from Kanyakumari in the 2014
parliamentary polls to be inducted in then Modi-led NDA
dispensation as Minister of State, but lost the subsequent
2019 Lok Sabha elections to Kumar from the same constituency.
He was then MoS Finance and Shipping.
Radhakrishnan is also a former state BJP president. PTI
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(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)