Naidu favourite in V-P poll today

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 4

The 15th vice-presidential election scheduled to be held here tomorrow will see a direct contest between the ruling NDA’s M Venkaiah Naidu and Opposition-backed Gopalkrishna Gandhi with the numbers stacked in favour of the former.

Edit: Electing next VICE-prez

Despite projections of a comfortable win for 68-year- old Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a gathering of NDA allies this evening to seal the victory of the BJP veteran.

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Gandhi, meanwhile, continued with his humble campaign by meeting MPs one on one, appealing in the name of his suitability and positioning himself as a citizen’s candidate. Nineteen Opposition parties led by the Congress are endorsing Gandhi’s candidature. These include the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD and the Nitish Kumar-led JDU which recently deserted the ruling alliance in Bihar.

Importantly, both these parties had backed BJP-led NDA’s candidate Ram Nath Kovind in the just concluded presidential poll. Despite this, the NDA has a clear majority in the electoral college for the vice-presidential election which consists of 790 MPs of both the Houses. They include 233 elected and 12 nominated MPs of the Rajya Sabha and 543 elected and two nominated MPs of the Lok Sabha. Both the Houses currently have two vacancies each. The candidate who secures one plus half of the total valid votes polled will be declared the winner tomorrow. So far as the number strength goes, the BJP alone commands 281 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 58 MPs in the Rajya Sabha.

With the value of each MP vote being one, if all electoral college votes polled are declared valid, Naidu will comfortably cross the finish mark of around 396 votes. His win will be powered by the collective NDA strength in the two Houses.  The Congress and 17 other parties backing Gandhi will fall short in numbers unless cross-voting on a massive scale happens.