Voting to elect the new Vice-President will take place today. NDA has fielded former minister for Parliamentary Affairs Jagdeep Dhankar to face Opposition’s Margaret Alva.
The elections for Vice-President are set to begin at 10 am and will go on till 5 pm today. The results are likely to be announced later in the evening.
Jagdeep Dhankar who has served as the Bengal Governor is likely to get 527 votes in his favour, which is far more than the needed 327 to win. It will be 70% of the total votes .
There are total 780 MPs in the Electoral College including 543 in Lok Sabha and 245 in Rajya Sabha. Keeping aside 36 MPs from Trinamool Congress and 8 seats vacant in Rajya Sabha, total 744 MPs have decided to vote today.
In total 441 MPs of NDA, BJP alone has 394. Five nominated members are also likely to vote for the NDA candidate.
Apart from NDA, Mr Dhankar has a backing from several other parties including Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress, Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, Akali Dal, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party and also of Eknath Shinde led faction of Shiv Sena.
Meanwhile, Margaret Alva may have 26% voting in her favour, who has a backing from Congress, Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, MK Stalin’s DMK, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and the Left parties.
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Aam Aadmi Part and nine MPs from Uddhav Thackeray led Shiv Sena factions are also backing the Opposition candidate.
On Friday, in a meeting of BJP MPs in Delhi, a dummy voting was conducted, which Mr Dhankar attended.
