Vice-Presidential Election Begins, Jagdeep Dhankhar Frontrunner

Vice-Presidential Election Begins
Vice-Presidential Election Begins

Vice-Presidential Election Begins: The election to choose the next Vice President of India is being held today, in which NDA candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar is expected to contest alone with the support of the BJP. The opposition’s Margaret Alva is a distant second.

The Vice-President election is underway in Parliament House and will continue till 5 pm today. The result is likely to come by evening. Prime Minister Narendra cast his vote as soon as the polling booth opened.

Vice-Presidential Election Begins

Jagdeep Dhankhar – known for his role as the former governor of Bengal – can expect 527 votes, far more than the 372 votes needed to win. This could be 70 per cent of the total votes, which is two per cent more than the votes polled by M Venkaiah Naidu.

The Electoral College comprises 780 MPs – 543 in the Lok Sabha and 245 in the Rajya Sabha. Barring eight vacant seats in the Upper House and 36 Trinamool Congress MPs who chose to abstain from voting, 744 MPs are expected to vote.

NDA has 441 MPs, out of which BJP has 394 MPs. Five nominated members are also supporting the NDA candidate.

Mr Dhankhar also has the support of several other non-NDA parties – Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, Akali Dal and Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde faction. Altogether they have 81 MPs.

Margaret Alva expects 26 percent of the vote (about 200). He is supported by Congress, MK Stalin’s DMK, Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Left parties.

In addition, nine MPs from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, Aam Aadmi Party and Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray faction are supporting Ms. Alva.

In the last election, the opposition candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi got 32 percent of the vote.

On Friday, Mr Dhankhar attended a meeting with BJP MPs in Delhi, where a dummy polling was conducted.

Under the system of proportional representation by single transferable vote, the elector has to mark the preferences against the names of the candidates.