Vice-Presidential Elections Today

New Delhi: The stage is set for the vice-presidential elections on Tuesday, in which the NDA’s C.P. Radhakrishnan and the Opposition’s Justice P. Sudershan Reddy (retd) are in the fray. With the BJD and the BRS deciding to abstain, the BJP-led NDA is all set for a sweeping victory.

Members of both Houses of Parliament will cast their votes at Parliament House between 10 am and 5 pm on Tuesday. The counting of votes will begin at 6 pm, and the results are likely to be announced by late in the evening.

The MPs are not bound by any party whip, and voting is held by secret ballot.

The MPs will be handed out ballot papers containing the names of the two contesting candidates and will have to mark their preference by writing the figure “1” opposite the name of the candidate of their choice.

The electoral college comprises 788 members — 245 from the Rajya Sabha and 543 from the Lok Sabha. The 12 nominated members of the Rajya Sabha are also eligible to vote in the election.

The present strength of the electoral college is 781, as six seats are vacant in the Rajya Sabha and one in the Lok Sabha. This puts the majority mark at 391. The NDA has 425 MPs, while the Opposition camp has the backing of 324 MPs.

Among the political parties that are not part of the ruling or the Opposition camps, the YSRC, with 11 members in Parliament, has decided to support the NDA nominee, while the BRS and the BJD have decided to abstain from voting in the election.

While Radhakrishnan is a BJP veteran from Tamil Nadu and was the Governor of Maharashtra, Reddy is a former Supreme Court judge who hails from Telangana and is known for key judgments, including the one declaring Salwa Judum, a group of trained tribal youth deployed as special police officers to take on Naxalites, as illegal and unconstitutional.

The vice-presidential poll has been described by the Opposition as an ideological battle, even as the numbers are stacked in favour of the ruling National Democratic Alliance.

The NDA is projecting Radhakrishnan, 67, as an untainted leader with rich political and administrative experience for the vice-president’s office, and saying these qualities will also prove to be useful as the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

Justice Reddy, 79, who retired from the apex court in July 2011, is a veteran jurist known for several landmark judgments criticising the then Union government for showing slackness in probing black money cases.

On the eve of the polls, the BJP attacked Justice Reddy for meeting RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav in his campaign to seek support, claiming that reaching out to a leader convicted in corruption cases has exposed his “hypocrisy”.

Addressing a press conference, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad took a jibe at Justice Reddy, a former Supreme Court judge, for seeking votes for saving the soul of India and making other big claims while choosing to meet a fodder scam convict. The BJP leader said Justice Reddy’s assertions fall flat in the face of his meeting someone not only convicted in the fodder scam but is also facing more corruption charges, including offering jobs in the Railways in lieu of bribes. “What kind of a retired Supreme Court judge are you? Lalu Prasad Yadav is not even a voter in the election. Please don’t talk of saving souls… This is hypocrisy in the extreme. We condemn his conduct,” he said.

The former law minister was also critical of several retired judges who had defended the Opposition candidate against home minister Amit Shah’s criticism of Justice Reddy for his judgment as a member of the Supreme Court double bench, which had disbanded Salwa Judum, a civil militia which worked with the police in fighting Maoists. The BJP alleged that the Salwa Judum ruling was a pointer to his sympathy for Naxals.

Prasad also said that Justice Reddy has acted below the dignity expected of a retired judge by meeting Yadav, whose party, RJD, has backed his candidature.

The BJP-led NDA and the Congress-led Opposition groups held separate meetings with their respective MPs on the eve of the election to sensitise them about the election process and also held mock polls.