Ex-president’s grandson in poll fray for Bengaluru seat
bengaluru — G. Subramanyam Sharma, 44, the grandson of former president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), is contesting from Malleswaram constituency in the May 12 Karnataka Assembly elections as a candidate of a fringe party to erase “inequality” in the state.
“As inequality between rich and the poor is widening in society, someone has to balance it through the system, into which I want to enter and usher in equality,” Sharma, a candidate of the newly-formed All India Mahila Empowerment Party (AIMEP), said in an interview.
The Chennai-born Sharma, who moved to Bengaluru over a decade ago (2006), turned a serial entrepreneur to provide jobs for others. His family-owned Sudeeksha Group is into diverse businesses spanning pharmacy, infrastructure, movies and dairy farming. “I originally come from a family of academicians, and not politicians,” said Sharma, whose father is renowned philosopher-statesman Radhakrishnan’s nephew (sister’s son).
Radhakrishnan was the second president of India from 1962 to 1967.
Sharma, after years of working as an entrepreneur, wanted to step up as a change-maker and find solutions to improve the healthcare, education and jobproviding capabilities of Indian society. With initial plans to contest as an Independent in the ensuing polls, he prepared an election manifesto with the changes he and the people in the constituency wished to bring about in the locality. —