India’s Vice President Race Heats Up: C.P. Radhakrishnan vs Sudershan Reddy, Battle Lines Clear
New Delhi: Battle lines are drawn for the Vice President elections on Tuesday, with the NDA’s candidate Maharashtra governor C.P. Radhakrishnan ahead of the INDIA bloc’s nominee Justice B. Sudershan Reddy in the number game as the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) announced on Monday (September 8) that they will abstain from the polls.
The electoral college comprises a total of 788 MPs from both houses. But with six vacancies, the effective number of MPs voting is down to 781, with an additional vacancy in the Rajya Sabha following Shibu Soren’s death last month. With the BJD’s seven MPs and the BRS’ four now abstaining, the total number has further come down to 770, and the majority mark at 386.
BJD MP Sasmit Patra in a statement said that the party has decided to stay away from the elections as they are “equidistant” from both the NDA and the INDIA bloc.
“After discussions between our party president Naveen Patnaik and senior leadership of the party and MPs, the BJD has decided to abstain from tomorrow’s vice-presidential election. The BJD remains equidistant from both the NDA and INDIA alliance. We are focused on the development and welfare of Odisha and the 4.5 crore people of Odisha,” said Patra to reporters.
The BRS on the other hand said that it was abstaining from the elections “on behalf of 70 lakh farmers” who were protesting against urea shortage and accused the BJP-led Union government and the Congress-led Telangana government of ignoring their concerns.
“If there was NOTA we would have opted for that, since there is no NOTA, we are abstaining,” said BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao to reporters on Monday.
While Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP has pledged support to the NDA, AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi said that his party would support the INDIA bloc’s Reddy. The NDA with 425 MPs is already comfortably ahead despite the abstentions of the BJD and the BRS as well as one MP each from Akali Dal, ZPM (Zoram People’s Movement) and VOTTP (Voice of the People Party) and three independents are yet to give a clear indication of their preference.
The Akali Dal attributed its decision to abstain from the election to the BJP-led Union government and the Aam Aadmi Party-led state government’s alleged lack of support for a Punjab that has been devastated by floods over the last couple of weeks.
On Sunday, Reddy who has faced attacks from the Union home minister Amit Shah for the Supreme Court’s 2011 Salwa Judum judgment, appealed to MPs to “vote in favour of the country and not any party.”
“The Vice Presidential election is just a few days away, and I sincerely request you to vote not in the interest of your party, but in the interest of the nation. I have full faith that whatever decision you take, it will not be in my favour or in your favour, but in the favour of the country,” he said.
However, on Monday, the BJP said that while Reddy had appealed to MPs to vote for the country, as a former judge he had gone and met former Bihar chief minister and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav who has been convicted of corruption in the fodder scam.
“Sudershan Reddy has given a statement that ‘vote for me to save the soul of the nation’… He met RJD Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is convicted in the fodder scam… What kind of a retired judge of the Supreme Court are you that you are meeting someone who is convicted of a scam?… This is hypocrisy. Please don’t talk about the soul of the nation,” said BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad at a press conference.
While the BJP had already started training its MPs for the poll, the opposition INDIA bloc held a mock election on Monday in the central hall of Samvidhan Sadan.
Under Article 66(1) of the constitution, the vice president’s election is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote and the voting at such election shall be by secret ballot.
In this system, the elector has to mark preferences against the names of the candidates. Preference can be marked in the international form of Indian numerals, in Roman form, or in the form in any recognised Indian languages. Preference has to be marked in figures only and shall not be indicated in words.
The elector can mark as many preferences as the number of candidates. While the marking of the first preference is compulsory for the ballot paper to be valid, other preferences are optional.
The election is necessitated by a move many have called unprecedented in the history of India’s parliamentary democracy – the resignation of former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar on July 21.
Dhankhar is believed to have been shunted by the BJP-led NDA which had nominated him. His tenure would have been till 2027. Since he has posted his resignation on X, Dhankhar has not been seen in public.
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