Venkaiah Naidu named NDA's Vice Presidential candidate

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union Housing and Urban Affairs, and Information and Broadcasting Minister Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu is the NDA's candidate for the post of Vice President, party chief Amit Shah announced in Delhi on Monday.

With this, Naidu has been pitted against Opposition's candidate Gopal Krishna Gandhi who had already filed his nominations.

Naidu will now file his nomination papers tomorrow.

Earlier, Naidu said that the Parliamentary board's decision on the Vice Presidential candidate will be final, adding that he is not aspiring to uphold any position.

"I'm not aspiring to become anything. The party will finally decide about the candidature and we will follow that. All other things are only speculations. Whatever the parliamentary board decides will be final," Naidu told media here.

A prominent leader of the BJP, he has also served as its national president from 2002 to 2004

Both as a student leader and political figure, Naidu gained prominence as a brilliant orator, who vigorously championed the cause of the farmers and the development of backward areas. His oratory skills and political activism propelled his political career and he was elected as an MLA to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly twice from Udayagiri constituency in Nellore district in 1978 and 1983. He rose to become one of the most popular leaders of the BJP in Andhra Pradesh.

After having served in various organisational posts of the BJP at the state and national level, he was elected as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka in 1998.

He has since been re-elected twice in 2004 and 2010 from Karnataka.