15th vice president of india

            

         SENIOR BJP leader and former Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu was on Saturday elected the 15th Vice-President of India.

 His election comes a day after the BJP became the single-largest party in the Rajya Sabha, over which he will now preside as its ex-officio chairperson. “I am very humbled. I am also thankful to the Prime Minister and all party leaders for their support. I will seek to utilise the vice-presidential institution to strengthen the hands of the president and secondly uphold the dignity of the Upper House,” Naidu said after his emphatic victory.

Naidu won 516 of the total 771 votes polled, in the 786-member electoral college. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Opposition’s candidate, got 244 votes, while 11 votes were declared invalid. Two BJP members, Vijay Goel and Sanwarlal Jat, could not cast their votes due to illness while party MP Chedi Paswan had been barred by the Supreme Court from voting.

A BJP leader said that since Naidu is from Andhra Pradesh, his term as Rajya Sabha chairman is expected to help the BJP get the backing of southern parties such as the AIADMK, TRS and YSR Congress during debates and passage of legislation in the Upper House.

On Saturday, before the results came out, Naidu assured that he would be bipartisan. “There is no my party or your party. Now I am a non-party man. A majority of political parties in India have supported my candidature,” he said.