NDA candidate C P Radhakrishnan was elected India’s 15th Vice-President on Tuesday, defeating joint Opposition candidate B Sudershan Reddy by a margin of 152 votes. The outcome came as a jolt to the Opposition bloc, which was hoping to secure at least 320-plus votes.
Radhakrishnan, 67, currently the Governor of Maharashtra, secured 452 of the 752 valid votes polled – with 15 declared invalid – against Reddy’s 300.
Soon after the voting ended at 5 pm, a confident Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said: “The Opposition has stood united. All of its 315 MPs have turned up for voting. This is an unprecedented 100 per cent turnout.”
However, the eventual numbers indicated that there was some cross-voting in the Opposition’s ranks. Asked about this, a senior Opposition leader said, “Invalid votes does not mean cross-voting,” indicating that the 15 votes which were found invalid were all of Opposition MPs.
Apart from these invalid votes, sources in the BJP said at least 15 opposition members voted for the NDA nominee.
The electoral college for the Vice-President election comprises members of the two Houses of Parliament. Together, the Houses have a sanctioned strength of 788 MPs, of which six are vacant in the Rajya Sabha and one in the Lok Sabha. Of the 781-member electorate, 767 votes were cast (98.2% turnout) Tuesday, of which 752 votes were found to be valid, Rajya Sabha Secretary General P C Mody, the Returning Officer for the election, said.
Incidentally, the same number of votes, 15, were found invalid in the 2022 vice-presidential election too, when Jagdeep Singh Dhankhar was elected.
Radhakrishnan’s victory was a foregone conclusion as the NDA alone had numbers above the halfway mark of 377. Adding to that was the support its candidate secured from the YSRCP, which has 11 MPs. But the final tally surpassed the expectations of the NDA, which was expecting Radhakrishnan to get around 440 votes.
Among the 14 MPs who abstained were 7 from the BJD, 4 of the BRS, 1 of the Shiromani Akali Dal and two Independents from Punjab. All had announced their decision to abstain from or boycott voting.
This is the second narrowest margin of victory in terms of number of votes in the Vice-Presidential election. The previous close contest was in 2002 when NDA nominee Bhairon Singh Shekhawat defeated Opposition candidate Sushilkumar Shinde by 149 votes.
In 1997, Krishna Kant, the consensus candidate of the Congress and the then ruling United Front, defeated Surjit Singh Barnala by 168 votes. Barnala was fielded by the BJP and its allies.
In 2022, Jagdeep Dhankhar, whose sudden and surprise resignation as V-P citing health reasons on the first day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament in July, necessitated the election, had won by a margin of 346 votes against Margaret Alva.
His predecessor M Venkaiah Naidu’s margin of victory against Gopalkrishna Gandhi in 2017 was 272 votes. Hamid Ansari had won in 2007 and 2012 by a margin of 233 and 252 votes respectively.
Congratulating Radhakrishnan, President Droupadi Murmu posted on X: “Your decades of rich experience in public life will contribute significantly to the nation’s progress.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Radhakrishnan’s life “has always been devoted to serving society and empowering the poor and marginalised”. “I am confident that he will be an outstanding VP, who will strengthen our Constitutional values and enhance Parliamentary discourse.”
Home Minister Amit Shah said: “I firmly believe that your sagacity as a leader who has risen from the grassroots of the society and your profound knowledge about administration will help us in bringing out the best in our parliamentary democracy to serve the marginalised.”
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said Radhakrishnan embodied humility, integrity and a deep commitment to service throughout his distinguished public life.
Congratulating Radhakrishnan on his victory, his opponent Reddy said although the result was not in his favour, the “ideological battle continues with ever greater vigour”. “I humbly accept this outcome with an abiding faith in the democratic processes of our great Republic. This journey has been a profound honour, offering me the opportunity to stand for the values that have guided my life – constitutional morality, justice, and the dignity of every individual.”
Reddy also thanked the Opposition parties who had made him their joint candidate. “Our democracy is strengthened not by victory alone, but by the spirit of dialogue, dissent, and participation.”
A two-time Lok Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore constituency, Chandrapuram Ponnusami Radhakrishnan was the Governor of Jharkhand before taking over as the Governor of Maharashtra in July last year. An active politician all his life, Radhakrishnan began his political journey in the RSS, at the age of 16, and rose steadily through the BJP’s ranks.
His victory in Lok Sabha elections in 1998 and 1999 from the Coimbatore seat catapulted him to leadership roles in the BJP and gave him both credibility and clout within the party as well as the RSS. He eventually went on to serve as the party’s Tamil Nadu president from 2004 to 2007 and also became a National Executive member of the BJP.
By nominating Radhakrishnan, who hails from Tamil Nadu, the BJP appears to have played a calculated ‘Mission South’ card. It also hopes to expand its electoral presence in the state, which goes to the assembly polls next year.
Congratulating Radhakrishnan, Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said: “We hope the new Vice President-elect will uphold the highest ethos of parliamentary traditions, ensuring equal space and dignity for the Opposition, and not succumb to pressures of the ruling dispensation. The Vice-President, the second highest Constitutional office in the order of precedence, must be revitalised to reflect independence, fairness, and strength in safeguarding democratic values.”
He added that Reddy had put up a spirited and principled fight. “This was more than an election; it was a battle of ideology, reaffirming that governments with authoritarian tendencies must be checked to protect our Constitution and democracy,” he said, adding, “We must also remember why this election was necessitated. Shri Jagdeep Dhankar resigned suddenly on the very day he chaired the opening of the Monsoon Session—an exit still unexplained and unceremonious.”
The office of National Conference MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi tweeted that he had not received any communication from his party about this matter. “However, it was an obvious ideological choice and decision, therefore he casted his vote in favour of the candidate of the INDIA bloc,” it said.