New Delhi: Maharashtra Governor C.P. Radhakrishnan was elected the 15th Vice-President of India Tuesday, defeating Opposition candidate Justice (retired) B. Sudershan Reddy by a margin of 152 votes, the narrowest victory for a V-P candidate since 2002.
While the NDA nominee’s win was a foregone conclusion given the ruling coalition’s numerical strength, the Opposition sought to send out a message of unity, by getting every MP from its ranks to back Justice Reddy in what was framed as a battle of ideologies.
After voting ended at 6 pm, Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh posted on X, “The voting in the Vice Presidential election is over. The Opposition has stood united. ALL of its 315 MPs have turned up for voting. This is an unprecedented 100% turnout.”
However, Justice Reddy got 300 votes, indicating that there was cross-voting in Radhakrishnan’s favour, denting the Opposition’s effort to project unity.
The Congress attributed the dip to votes of Opposition MPs being held invalid. But NDA pulling more than expected votes suggested that some Opposition MPs backed Radhakrishnan.
The electoral college comprised 781 members. However, with two independent MPs and 12 lawmakers from the BJD, BRS, and Shiromani Akali Dal abstaining—citing their stance of maintaining “equal distance” from both the ruling NDA and the Opposition’s INDIA bloc—eventually 767 MPs voted.
At 7.30 pm, Rajya Sabha Secretary P.C. Mody announced that 752 votes were held as valid, while 15 were declared invalid, making 377 the halfway mark. Mody said Radhakrishnan bagged 452 votes, while 300 votes were cast in Justice Reddy’s favour.
The Opposition was expected to bag 324 votes, counting six independent MPs aligned with the bloc, while the NDA had the backing of 432 MPs, including parties not formally part of the alliance in the alliance, such as the YSRCP.
Radhakrishnan’s principal challenge will now lie in steering the Rajya Sabha as its chairperson without being seen as someone whose ideological predilections override his constitutional mandate to act as an impartial arbiter, something his predecessor Jagdeep Dhankhar was accused of having failed to do.
In a statement, his first after resigning, Dhankhar congratulated Radhakrishnan.
“Your elevation to this august office reflects the trust and confidence by the representatives of our nation. Given your vast experience in public life, under your stewardship, the august office would certainly attain greater veneration and glory,” he wrote to Radhakrishnan.
In the run-up to voting, Justice Reddy and the Opposition campaigned for a “conscience vote”, noting that Vice-Presidential elections are not governed by a party whip. In other words, MPs do not face disqualification for voting against their party’s choice in the V-P polls.
Tuesday’s election to the country’s second-highest constitutional office was necessitated by the sudden and dramatic resignation of Dhankhar on 21 July, during the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
Although Dhankhar cited medical reasons for stepping down, political insiders suggest his resignation was the result of a serious breakdown in his relationship with the government, effectively forcing him to quit.
The apparent tipping point came when Dhankhar, in his capacity as Rajya Sabha chairperson, disclosed that he had received a notice from Opposition MPs seeking to initiate an impeachment motion against Justice Yashwant Varma.
The announcement reportedly displeased the government, which had intended to manage the sensitive matter on its own terms and control the political narrative surrounding the judge’s potential removal.
Having suffered politically from appointing someone perceived as outside its ideological fold, the BJP course-corrected. This time, the party chose Radhakrishnan, a low-profile, loyal functionary with deep roots in the RSS, as its nominee, signalling a shift back to safer choices for key constitutional positions.
That Radhakrishnan’s approach will be starkly different from Dhankhar, who loved the spotlight, was evident in the run-up to Tuesday’s election. Radhakrishnan did not give any media interviews, nor did he make any official statement, other than thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President JP Nadda for nominating him as NDA candidate.
As Radhakrishnan sought to stay above the political fray, the BJP leadership took the lead in attacking Justice Reddy, who described the V-P duel as a fight between a liberal constitutional democrat and a quintessential RSS person.
Home Minister Shah himself led the charge against Justice Reddy, accusing him of weakening the fight against Naxals through the 2011 judgment outlawing the deployment of tribal youths as Special Police Officers in the fight against Maoist insurgency. Justice Reddy defended himself, saying it was not his individual judgement but that of an SC bench that had another judge.
In the 2022 elections, Dhankhar had defeated the Opposition candidate Margaret Alva by a margin of 346 votes, while in 2017, the BJP’s Venkaiah Naidu won by 272 votes against Gopalkrishna Gandhi fielded by the Opposition. In the 2012 and 2007 elections, both won by Hamid Ansari, the victory margins were 233 and 149 respectively.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)