According to the data, a total of 543 Lok Sabha MPs and 245 Rajya Sabha MPs are the Electoral College. Out of the Electoral College, eight seats of MPs are vacant from Rajya Sabha while 36 TMC MPs have decided to abstain from voting.
New Delhi: With MPs casting their votes, voting to choose India’s Vice-President in underway at Parliament House and will continue till 5 pm. Former West Bengal Governor and NDA’s candidate Jagdeep Dhankar is expected to win Vice-President elections with BJP’s votes alone. A winning candidate required 372 votes in his favour while Dhankar is likely to get support of 527 MPs. All-opposition’s candidate Margaret Alva is expected to get votes of nearly 200 opposition MPs which is far away from the majority mark. If Dhankar wins, he will replace Venkaiah Naidu who has served his tenure as Vice-President of the country for five years.
Early morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi voted when voting started. According to the data, a total of 543 Lok Sabha MPs and 245 Rajya Sabha MPs are the Electoral College. Out of the Electoral College, eight seats of MPs are vacant from Rajya Sabha while 36 TMC MPs have decided to abstain from voting. With this, total 744 MPs will use their franchise to choose Vice-President who will also chair Upper House of the Parliament. The data says, NDA has 441 MPs which is more than the majority mark. The BJP alone has 394 MPs in both the houses of Parliament which is more than majority and the party may elect Vice-President from its own votes.
Apart from NDA’s votes, Jagdeep Dhankar is getting support of non-NDA MPs like Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, Akali Dal and the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena. These parties have a total of 81 MPS in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
All-opposition’s candidate Margaret Alva may get support of nearly 200 MPS from opposition parties which are Congress, DMK, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nationalist Congress Party, Samajwadi Party and the Left parties. Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, Aam Aadmi Party and Shiv Sena MPs of Uddhav Thackeray faction have also been supporting Maragaret Alva.