Padma Awards 2024:Â Former Vice President of India Muppavarpu Venkaiah Naidu was announced to be conferred the Padma Vibhushan award on Thursday on the eve of Republic Day. 74-year-old Venkaiah Naidu, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, has been honored with one of the highest civilian awards for exceptional and distinguished service in public affairs.
Naidu, who held the post of Vice President from 2017 to 2022, continued serving the people through the Swarna Bharat Trust.
A flamboyant and effective communicator steeped in the ideology of the RSS-BJP, Naidu became party president and Union minister and eventually Vice President of India.
Hailing from Nellore district in south coastal Andhra, Naidu was associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from an early age. He was also a student leader and later advocated the interests of farmers.
Born on July 1, 1949 in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh, Naidu V.R. College, Nellore. Was the President of the Student Union in 1973-74. He was the President of Andhra University Colleges Students Union.
Naidu studied law and joined the movement started by Jayaprakash Narayan. He formed Loknayak Jai Prakash Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti in 1974.
He was the president of the youth wing of the Janata Party in Andhra Pradesh from 1977 to 1980.
Naidu was jailed during the Emergency (1975–77). Until his arrest he remained underground and distributed anti-government literature in educational institutions in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. He was accused of disrupting a meeting of Sanjay Gandhi and was handcuffed while being taken from one jail to another.
When the Janata Party was formed on the eve of the 1977 general elections, he became the state president of the Janata Yuva Morcha.
Contesting his first election as a Janata Party candidate, he was elected to the state assembly from Udayagiri in Nellore district in 1978.
After a three-year tenure, he joined the BJP in 1980. Naidu was re-elected to the state assembly in 1983 and was the floor leader of the three-member BJP group in the House from 1980–85.
He also became the vice president of the youth wing of BJP. He was the BJP legislative party leader, state general secretary and state unit chief in Andhra Pradesh.
Naidu was the General Secretary of BJP from 1993-2000 and its spokesperson during this period.
He later emerged as a BJP leader at the national level and served as the party’s general secretary and spokesperson, but he could not get elected to the Lok Sabha. He contested elections three times but was unsuccessful.
He also held key organizational positions in the BJP and became its president in 2002.
He was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka for three consecutive terms from 1998 to 2016. After that he was elected from Rajasthan for the fourth time. He was the Rural Development Minister during the first NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, senior party leader L.K. Advani was his source of inspiration.
Before being elected Vice President, Naidu was the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Urban Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation in the Modi government. He was also the Parliamentary Affairs Minister for the first two years in the Modi government.
(Courtsy: IANS)
