Jagdeep Dhankhar slated for victory in Vice Presidential polls

Even before the first vote is cast on August 6, the winner of the Vice Presidential election is clear, if MPs vote as per their party affiliations – the Opposition candidate will not poll even half of what the ruling NDA’s nominee Jagdeep Dhankar will get.

The BJP-led NDA’s candidate could get a minimum of 455, – 359 in Lok Sabha and 116 in Rajya Sabha, and it could shoot to 522 in the Vice Presidential elections if parties like YSR Congress, BJD, BSP, JD(S) and Akali Dal, which pledged support for its Presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu do so in the August 6 polls too.

At the same time, the Opposition can get only 256 votes – 154 from Lok Sabha and 102 from Rajya Sabha. Shiv Sena, which has 22 MPs, attended the Opposition meet that chose Alva as their candidate.

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Interestingly, the BJP alone can win the poll as it has 395 votes, five more than what is needed for a victory. This could move up to 400, if all the five nominated MPs also join the BJP bandwagon. In contrast, the main Opposition party Congress has just 84 MPs.

For the Vice Presidential election, the electoral college consists of all the 788 MPs, including the nominated ones. However at present, there are nine vacancies in Rajya Sabha and if not filled in time, the majority mark will be 390.

Among the Vice Presidents, the first three – Dr S Radhakrishnan, Dr Zakir Husain and VV Giri – as well as R Venkaraman, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma and K R Narayanan went on to become Presidents. Radhakrishnan and M Hamid Ansari were the only two people to have two terms as Vice Presidents.

Read | Dhankhar kept TMC on its toes, with tweets and questions

In the Vice Presidential elections, Narayanan holds the record of getting the highest number of votes – 700 out of 701 votes polled in 1992. His opponent Kaka Joginder Singh alias Dharti Pakad got one vote and that is the lowest in the history of Vice Presidential polls.

There are three persons – Radhakrishnan, M Hidayatullah and Sharma – who were the only ones who won unopposed.

Only one woman has so far contested the Vice President’s polls – Najma Heptullah in 2007 against Ansari’s first term. Ansari then polled 455 votes while Heptullah got 222 while a third candidate Rasheed Masood got 75 votes.

It was only twice the losing candidate got more than half of votes polled by the winning candidates – defeated candidate Surjit Singh got 273 as against winner Krishan Kant who got 441 and Sushil Kumar Shinde bagging 305 against winner Bhairon Singh Shekhawat’s 454.