NDA, INDIA to battle it out in election for India’s 15th V-P
The NDA, along with the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), has 429 MPs supporting Radhakrishnan while 324 Opposition MPs are supporting Reddy
The 15th Vice President of India is all set to be elected on Tuesday, in an electoral battle of ballots that will test the unity and strength of both the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Opposition bloc although NDA’s candidate CP Radhakrishnan looks set to win over former Supreme Court judge B Sudershan Reddy.
Still, with Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and K Chandrasekhara Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) announcing their abstention from the election, the margin of victory is likely to be small. The BJD has seven MPs and the BRS four.
The NDA, along with the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), has 429 MPs supporting Radhakrishnan while 324 Opposition MPs are supporting Reddy. The Vice President will be elected by members of both Houses of Parliament who will be a part of the electoral college, which has 786 votes but is currently at an effective strength of 781. Eleven lawmakers are set to abstain. Any candidate who gets at least 386 votes will be declared winner.
The polling will start at 10am at Vasudha hall in the new Parliament building — in a departure from the past when all such elections were held in the old Parliament House, now renamed as Samvidhan Sadan. “The polling will take place from 10am and close at 5pm on September 9 and the result will be declared on Tuesday,” the Rajya Sabha Secretariat announced.
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Both sides have worked overtime to ensure all their MPs cast their votes to ensure maximum polling. According to political managers of both sides special teams have been set to manage the voting process. Two Trinamool MPs, Sudip Bandopadhyay and Saugata Ray, who skipped the entire monsoon session due to health issues, have been flown down from Kolkata as the TMC doesn’t want to waste any votes.
Both sides held mock polling exercises on Monday to remind lawmakers how to cast their votes. AAP lawmakers skipped the Opposition’s drill citing the flood situation in Punjab, but two Congress leaders insisted that the party has confirmed that they will be present on Tuesday. AAP has 12 MPs (Rajya Sabha 9, Lok Sabha 3).
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Analysts didn’t rule out the possibility of cross voting — a practice prevalent in such polls. And according to Lok Sabha functionaries, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who represents the Kota Bundi constituency, is also expected to cast his vote on Tuesday.
The electoral college for election of the Vice President of India consists of the members of both Houses of Parliament. The nominated members of Rajya Sabha are also included in the electoral college and, therefore, are entitled to participate in the election.
While the Opposition has termed the poll as a battle between the Constitution and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP has continued to launch attacks on Reddy. On the eve of the election, it targeted Reddy for seeking support from former Bihar chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad Yadav, convicted for his role in financial irregularities and corruption in the animal husbandry department of the state when he was the chief minister.
Addressing the media, former union minister and senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad accused Reddy, a former Supreme Court judge of “hypocrisy” for seeking votes from a convicted politician.
Prasad said, on the one hand, Reddy talks about saving the nation’s soul while on the other, he seeks support from a leader facing multiple corruption cases. Citing a piece that Reddy wrote in a newspaper where he said a vote for him would “save the soul of the nation”, and referred to Parliament as a “temple of democracy”, Prasad said the candidate’s actions contradicted those words. A group of lawyers have also objected to Reddy going to Lalu Prasad Yadav to seek votes.
At least eight former judges also criticised Reddy for meeting Yadav.
“Mr. Yadav stands infamously convicted in the fodder scam case which involved the embezzlement of about INR 940 Crore of public funds from the State of Bihar. This consultation cannot be justified by citing electoral considerations, as Mr. Yadav is neither a Member of Parliament nor is he eligible to vote in the Vice -Presidential electoral college. The meeting therefore appears to serve no legitimate political purpose,” the judges said in a statement.
The signatories include former justices SM Khandeparkar and Ambadas Joshi, Bombay high court; RK Marthiya, Jharkhand high court; Devender kumar Ahuja, Allahabad high court and PN Ravindran, Kerala high court among others.
Earlier, Union home minister Amit Shah had said that Reddy’s 2011 Salwa Judum judgment came in the way of the fight against left wing extremism. In the judgment, Reddy had said arming young men from tribal communities and calling them “special police officers” was “illegal” and “unconstitutional”.
The poll became necessary after Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar dramatically tendered his resignation on July 21, hours after he acknowledged an Opposition-sponsored impeachment notice against former Delhi high court judge Yashwant Verma, irking the government.
The voting areas were sanitised on Monday. Apart from MPs, officials and some accredited mediapersons, no one will be allowed to enter the voting areas.
