CP Radhakrishnan, the NDA candidate, won the Vice Presidential election, defeating INDIA’s Sudarshan Reddy by 152 votes. Radhakrishnan garnered 452 votes, while Reddy secured 300. The INDIA alliance fell short of its expected vote count. With 315 MPs in Parliament, the alliance was 15 votes shy of its target.
Jairam Ramesh, Congress General Secretary, took to X to announce the opposition’s unity and 100% attendance for the voting process. This claim implies that the opposition was 15 votes short. Each party is now busy asserting that there were no cross-voters from their side.
The NDA, on the other hand, had 427 MPs and received an additional 25 votes. Out of the total 788 MPs in both houses of Parliament, 781 were eligible to vote. The NDA comprised 427 MPs, while the opposition had 354, including 315 from the INDIA alliance. Notably, 39 MPs did not belong to either the NDA or the INDIA alliance, prompting a closer look at their voting behavior.
Even without a whip, the opposition succeeded in ensuring the participation of all its members in the voting. Reflecting the importance of the elections, two Lok Sabha members from Trinamool Congress, Sudeep Bandopadhyay and Saugata Roy, cast their votes despite their health issues.