NDA's Jagdeep Dhankhar elected India's 14th Vice President

NDA candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday trounced joint Opposition nominee Margaret Alva to become the next Vice President of India in a more or less one-sided battle that saw all Trinamool Congress MPs barring two abstaining from the voting over differences with the Opposition camp.

Dhankhar (71), the 14th Vice President who was earlier associated with Congress and Janata Dal before joining BJP in 2008, will succeed M Venkaiah Naidu, who will be retiring on August 10. Dhankhar, who will also act as Rajya Sabha Chairman, will be sworn in as the new Vice President on August 11.

Soon after the announcement of the result, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Dhankhar and congratulated him.

Former West Bengal Governor Dhankhar, a lawyer by profession who was a Minister in the short-lived Chandrasekhar government in 1990, got 528 first preference votes out of 725 votes polled between 10 AM and 5 PM during the day while Alva, a former Union Minister, garnered the support of 182. Fifteen MPs’ votes were invalid.

Of the 780 MPs in the electoral college, 92.94% voted and Dhankhar, whom the BJP projected as ‘Kisan Putra’ while announcing his candidature, won by 346 votes. His candidature was also seen as BJP’s attempts to reach out to Jats in poll-bound Rajasthan and Haryana.

One of the major challenges for Dhankhar will be to run the Rajya Sabha where the Opposition is seeking to corner the Modi government. The decibel levels are likely to rise in the next couple of years, as the Lok Sabha election is scheduled in the first half of 2024.

Dhankhar's election was a foregone conclusion as the ruling NDA had an overwhelming majority in the electoral college, which consists of the elected and nominated MPs in Parliament. Dhankhar was to get 539 votes, going by pledged support including by non-NDA parties like BJD, YSR Congress, TDP and BSP, while Alva was to get 205, if all the 780 eligible MPs voted.

Alva, who pitched the election as a referendum on the functioning of Parliament,  congratulated Dhankhar soon after the results were out but minced no words about the chinks in the Opposition camp when she said some Opposition parties “unfortunately” chose to “directly or indirectly support the BJP, in an attempt to derail the idea of a united opposition”.

To her, the election was an opportunity for the opposition “to work together, to leave the past behind and build trust” amongst each other.

“It is my belief that by doing so, these parties and their leaders have damaged their own credibility. This election is over. The battle for protecting our Constitution, strengthening our democracy and restoring the dignity of Parliament, will continue," she said.

Alva did not name any party but it appeared that her aim was Trinamool Congress particularly as the Mamata Banerjee-led party had abstained from voting, accusing Congress and others of not holding proper consultations while naming the candidate. Trinamool’s action brought down Alva’s number much below 200 mark.

Interestingly, two out of 36 Trinamool MPs – Sishir Adhikari and Dibyendu Adhikari who are unofficially aligned with the BJP  – came to vote ignoring letters written to them by Trinamool Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandhyopadhyay. However, BJP MP Arjun Singh, who has cosied up to the Trinamool, did not turn up for voting.

Returning Officer Utpal Kumar Singh, who is also Lok Sabha Secretary General, said the quota necessary for being elected to the office of the Vice President was determined to be 356 as the total number of first preference votes got by the two candidates were 710.

"As the first preference votes secured by Jagdeep Dhankhar was greater than the requisite quote, I, as Returning Officer, declare Jagdeep Dhankhar duly elected to the office of the Vice President of India," Singh told a press conference.