GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 6th August. Former West Bengal governor and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar, 71, was elected as India’s 14th Vice President on Saturday, defeating joint opposition candidate Margaret Alva by 346 votes.
Announcing the results, Lok Sabha Secretary General Utpal Kumar Singh stated that Dhankhar received 528 of the total 725 votes cast, while Alva received 182. The overall turnout was 92.94 percent.
Jagdeep Dhankhar will succeed incumbent Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu, whose five-year tenure ends on August 10.
The Vice-President of India is elected by an electoral college composed of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha members. The electoral college consists of 780 members, 543 in the Lok Sabha and 245 in the Rajya Sabha.
The NDA has 441 members, including 394 BJP members. In addition, five nominated members backed Dhankar, bringing the total NDA tally to 464.
725 of the 780 MPs voted on Saturday. While there are eight vacant Rajya Sabha seats, 34 Trinamool MPs did not vote, and two BJP MPs, Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dhotre, were unable to vote due to illness. 15 votes were invalidated.
Among the opposition parties, Dhankhar received support from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the YSR Congress Party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Telugu Desam Party, Akali Dal, and the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena. These seven parties have 81 MPs together.
The Trinamool Congress, which has 36 MPs, had decided not to vote. According to Parliament sources, two Trinamool MPs, Shishir Adhikary and his son Dibyendu Adhikary, voted in the Vice President elections despite party directives.
Among the key opposition parties that supported Alva were the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, Nationalist Congress Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, Samajwadi Party, Left parties, and nine MPs from Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray faction.
Dhankhar, one of Rajasthan’s leading lawyers, has practised in both the Rajasthan High Court and the Supreme Court of India, and his legal knowledge is expected to be useful in his role as Rajya Sabha chairman.
Dhankhar, described as a “kisan putra” (farmer’s son) by BJP chief J.P. Nadda, was born in an agrarian family in a remote village in Jhunjhunu. He graduated from Chittorgarh High School and earned his LLB from the University of Rajasthan in 1979.
The lawyer entered politics in 1989 and has been involved in public life for more than three decades.
His tenure as West Bengal governor, which began in 2019, has been marked by frequent clashes with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. So much so that the Trinamool chief blocked Dhankhar on the microblogging platform Twitter in January of this year.
The West Bengal Assembly recently passed a bill seeking the appointment of CM Mamata Banerjee as chancellor of 17 state universities in place of Dhankhar.
A TMC delegation even wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind in December 2020, urging him to recall the governor.
Dhankhar was first elected as MP for Jhunjhunu on a Janata Dal ticket in the 1989 Lok Sabha election. In 1990, he became Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs. He was later elected to the Rajasthan Assembly from Kishangarh in the Ajmer district in 1993. In 2003, he joined the BJP.
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