GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 11th August. Jagdeep Dhankhar was sworn in as India’s 14th Vice President on Thursday.
At Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi, President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to him as Vice President. The Vice President is also the Rajya Sabha’s ex-officio Chairman.
On August 6, Dhankhar was elected Vice President after defeating Opposition candidate Margaret Alva.
On August 7, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey signed the ‘Certification of Jagdeep Dhankar’s Election as India’s Next Vice President’.
The BJP-led NDA candidate easily won the election with 528 votes to Alva’s 182.
Dhankhar received 74.36% of the vote. He has the largest margin of victory in the last six vice presidential elections since 1997.
According to the returning officer for the vice presidential election, 725 electors cast ballots, but 15 votes were found to be invalid. He said the turnout was 92.94 percent, and that a candidate needed 356 votes to be elected.
Dhankhar was born on May 18, 1951, in an agrarian family in a village in Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district, and attended Sainik School in Chittorgarh. He completed his LLB from the University of Rajasthan after finishing his physics degree. Despite being a first-generation professional, he rose to become one of the state’s top lawyers.
Dhankhar, 71, has practised in both the Rajasthan High Court as well as the Supreme Court of India. He entered public life after being elected as a Member of Parliament from Jhunjhunu on a Janata Dal ticket in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections.
In 1990, he also held the position of Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs. Initially, Devi Lal, a former deputy prime minister, had an impact on his political views.
Dhankhar, a Jat, later shifted his focus to state politics and was elected to the Rajasthan Assembly from the Kishangarh constituency in Ajmer district in 1993.
In 2019, Dhankhar was appointed Governor of West Bengal.
On July 17, he resigned as West Bengal Governor after being named the National Democratic Alliance’s vice presidential candidate (NDA).
The Vice President of India, the country’s second-highest constitutional post, is elected by an electoral college of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha members.
The Vice President also serves as the Rajya Sabha’s Chairman. Dhankar will preside over the proceedings of the Upper House of Parliament at a time when there are apparent divisions between the treasury benches and the opposition.
The presiding officers of both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will be from Rajasthan with Dhankhar’s election as vice president.
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