The vice-presidential polls are set to take place on September 9 with INDIA bloc candidate B Sudershan Reddy all set to face NDA pick CP Radhakrishnan.Jagdeep Dhankhar stepped down on July 21, the opening day of the Monsoon session, citing health concerns. He has since stayed out of the public eye and had been residing at the Vice-President’s Enclave near Parliament House until recently.Meanwhile, Reddy has urged the MPs to “vote thoughtfully keeping the nation’s interest above the party interest.”“Honourable Members…The election for the Vice-Presidential post is going to take place in 2-3 days. I earnestly request everyone to vote thoughtfully, keeping the nation’s interest above the party interest,” he said.
Reddy or Radhakrishnan?
The BJP-led NDA holds a strong majority with around 422 projected votes, comfortably above the required mark. However, defections to the INDIA bloc could narrow the margin.Meanwhile, TMC, AAP and AIMIM have offered their support to Reddy. Moreover, BRS and BJD will abstain from voting in the polls.The vice president is chosen by members of both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, with nominated members of the Upper House also eligible to vote. At present, the NDA enjoys a clear advantage.Together, the two Houses have 786 members, accounting for six vacancies, one in the Lok Sabha (Basirhat, West Bengal) and five in the Rajya Sabha (four from Jammu and Kashmir and one from Punjab, following AAP MP Sanjeev Arora’s resignation after his victory in a state assembly bypoll last month). To win, a candidate must secure at least 394 votes, assuming full turnout.
An abrupt resignation and the need for new VP
Dhankhar’s abrupt resignation on July 21, citing health reasons, sent shockwaves through Delhi’s political circles. With two years still remaining in his five-year term, Dhankhar became only the third vice president in history to resign before completing his tenure, after VV Giri and R Venkataraman. The timing of his exit, on the very first day of the Monsoon session of Parliament, raised eyebrows, and many speculated that the official explanation was masking deeper political undercurrents.Much of the intrigue centered on the curious sequence of events in the hours leading up to his resignation. Dhankhar remained active earlier in the day, chairing the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) at 12.30pm, which was attended by senior leaders including JP Nadda and Kiren Rijiju. However, when the BAC had reconvened at 4.30pm, neither leader showed up, and Dhankhar reportedly not was not informed in advance of their absence.Congress’s Jairam Ramesh seized on the episode, arguing that “something very serious” had happened between 1pm and 4.30 pm. Speculation only deepened after Dhankhar’s final official act: permitting a motion for the removal of Justice Yashwant Varma of the Allahabad high court, an unprecedented move that had aligned with his history of sharp criticism of the judiciary.Meanwhile, political theories proliferated. RJD suggested that the resignation was part of a BJP strategy to sideline chief minister Nitish Kumar by pushing him toward the vice president’s office, a claim NDA leaders dismissed but one that had been widely discussed in poll-bound Bihar. The BJP, for its part, pushed back against opposition insinuations, with Nadda clarifying that both he and Rijiju had informed the vice president’s office about their inability to attend the BAC meeting. Yet, with unanswered questions about Dhankhar’s health, timing, and final acts in office, his resignation had become fertile ground for conspiracy theories and political maneuvering alike.
