E-Paper
Why Congress claims ‘moral loss’ for BJP in Vice President election, and what numbers say
Number for INDIA bloc's Reddy was lower the 315 mentioned by Jairam Ramesh earlier in the day when he wrote about “100% turnout” for the Opposition
The Congress has insisted that despite BJP-led NDA candidate CP Radhakrishnan's win to become the next Vice President of India, this was just an “arithmetical victory” but “moral and political defeat” for the ruling party.
Congress communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh noted that Opposition INDIA bloc's joint candidate, former Supreme Court judge B Sudershan Reddy, got 40% of the vote. “In 2022, the Opposition had received 26% of the vote,” he wrote on X, after results of the vice-presidential elections came out on Tuesday evening.
In absolute numbers, though, of the valid votes counted, 452 MPs chose NDA's Radhakrishnan, whereas Reddy of the Congress-led INDIA bloc got just 300.
Ramesh had mentioned 315 Opposition MPs in a post about “100% turnout” for the Opposition. This means the number for Reddy was lower than expected as per pre-poll calculations.
Some MPs may have cross-voted, or their votes held invalid due to marking errors — that was not yet clear.
Case of 15 votes
- There were 781 total eligible members from both Houses of Parliament (accounting for some vacancies), of which 14 were set to abstain anyway for varied reasons.
- Finally, 752 valid votes were counted, data showed. This meant 29 were invalid or abstained.
- Since 14 MPs already said they won't vote, dats showed another 15 votes eventually did not come into play.
What happened in 2022
In 2022, the Congress-led Opposition had nominated Margaret Alva as its candidate, who got just below 26% votes as the BJP-led NDA's Jagdeep Dhankhar won. On that count, Ramesh's assessment is correct when comparing Opposition vote shares of 2025 and 2022.
Dhankhar, however, got the highest number of electoral votes in more than 30 years of VP elections, as there were many cases of cross-voting then too.
In the VP elections, MPs are not bound by any party whip and can vote in secret as per individual choice.
There has been some improvement in Opposition numbers over time anyhow. The Congress alone had won just over 50 seats in the Lok Sabha election preceding the 2022 VP contest, in 2019; but that tally crossed 100 after last year's general election. Its INDIA bloc now is also a wider berth than the alliance earlier was.
Kharge congratulates new VP
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge congratulated CP Radhakrishnan, an RSS-BJP veteran from Tamil Nadu.
“We hope [he] will uphold highest ethos of parliamentary traditions, ensuring equal space for Opposition,” Kharge said.
As VP, Radhakrishnan will also be the chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, responsible for the conduct of the Upper House of Parliament.
He succeeds Dhankhar, whose exit around two months ago remains the subject of mirth and speculation even though he only cited health reasons.
