The Prime Minister was the first to cast his vote for the elections of the vice-president. The voting began from 10 am on 9th September, and will continue till 5 pm, after which the counting will start from 6 pm. The NDA candidate for the post of vice-president is CP Radhakrishnan, who is contesting against the opposition candidate Justice B Sudarshan Reddy, the official nominee of the INDIA bloc.
The elections are ongoing due to the sudden resignation of former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar due to health-related reasons. Other union ministers who accompanied the Prime Minister during the voting in room number 101, Vasudha in the Parliament building, were Kiren Rijiju, Arjun Ram Meghwal, L Murugam, and Jitendra Singh. The prime minister took to his X handle to announce that he had cast a vote in the elections, post which he left to visit the flood-hit states, Himachal Pradesh, and Punjab.
The current strength of the Vice-Presidential electoral college is 781 members, with 542 members belonging to the Lok Sabha and 238 to the Rajya Sabha. While the majority mark is set at 391, which the candidates need for victory. The leading party, NDA, has 425 MPs backing it, while the opposition has 324 MPs in its support. But as per the constitutional provisions, a member of any party is not bound by the party’s decision in the elections of the Vice-President.
Both the majority party and the opposition had a meeting with the MPs of their supporting parties separately before the election today, as it is a crucial leadership position in the parliament and the country. Six ministers have been deployed by the NDA to manage the elections, including the Minority Affairs minister, Kiren Rijuju, for the Northeast, Prahalad Joshi for the Southern states, Nitayanand Rai for Bihar, and Piyush Goyal for Uttar Pradesh. While the other ministers are supervising their respective regions.
The government has also conducted mock sessions to ensure that no vote is invalid and all MPs mark the papers correctly.
