C. P. Radhakrishnan
C. P. Radhakrishnan (born 1957) an Indian politician, is from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and was elected to the Lok Sabha twice from Coimbatore. He is also the former state president of the party for Tamil Nadu. Presently he is 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 (MSME). Political career. Radhakrishnan was a two-time  member of the Lok Sabha. He won on a BJP ticket in the 1998 and 1999 general elections in the aftermath of the 1998 Coimbatore bombings. 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 ended its ties with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Radhakrishnan later worked with the state unit to forge ties with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam for the 2004 elections. In 2012, Radhakrishnan courted arrest in Mettupalayam for protesting inaction against culprits who had assaulted a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 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 election from Coimbatore. C.P. Radhakrishnan described DMK president M.K. Stalin as the “commander who defeated the BJP” after 2019 Indian general election.