As expected, NDA candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar won the election to become the next vice-president of India, defeating opposition candidate Margaret Alva by a wide margin. Jagdeep Dhankhar will be the 14th Vice-President of the Republic of India. The tenure of the current Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu is about to complete on 10th August 2022.
After the end of counting, Jagdeep Dhankhar received 528 votes out of total 725 votes cast. On the other hand, opposition candidate and Congress leader Margaret Alva secured 182 votes. Out of the 780 voters in the electoral college, 725 persons cast their votes. The two Houses of Parliament together have a sanctioned strength of 788 MPs, of which there are eight vacancies in the Upper House.
Out of the total 725 votes cast, 15 votes were rendered invalid. Jagdeep Dhankhar secured a comfortable victory over Margaret Alva in this election. Apart from being the vice president, he will also be the Chairman of the upper house of the parliament, the Rajya Sabha.
The voting for the election of the vice president took place earlier in the day, where only the members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are members of the electoral college. The MPs including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his predecessor Manmohan Singh cast their ballots early in the day, while two BJP MPs Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dhotre, who are unwell, did not vote. The Trinamool Congress Party has 39 MPs including 23 of them in Lok Sabha. The TMC had already announced its decision to abstain from this election, reducing the votes for the opposition candidate. TMC had that it will not vote in the polls as the party was not consulted while selecting Margaret Alva as the opposition candidate.
Jagdeep Dhankhar will take oath as the Vice President of India on August 11, a day after the term of current VP Venkaiah Naidu ends.
Jagdeep Dhankhar hails from the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan. Born on 18th May 1951, a lawyer by profession, he is in active politics since 1989. He served as a member of Lok Sabha from the Jhunjhunu constituency and worked as a minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs between 1990-1991. He also worked as a member of the legislative assembly of Rajasthan from the Kishangarh constituency between 1993 to 1998. Since 30th July 2019, he has been working as the Governor of West Bengal, and resigned from the post on July 17 after he was selected as NDA candidate for the VP election.
The Vice-President is elected by an electoral college consisting of members of both Houses of Parliament, in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote and the voting in such election is by secret ballot. Therefore, only the members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are voters in the VP polls, and members of state assemblies don’t vote in this election, unlike the presidential elections.
