Prime Minister Narendra Modi cast the first vote as polling opened at 10 am on Tuesday for the high-stakes Vice-Presidential election in the new Parliament building.
Voting will continue until 5 pm, with counting scheduled to begin at 6 pm and the result will be out later in the evening.
The NDA’s candidate, C P Radhakrishnan, is contesting against Justice (Retd) B Sudershan Reddy, the nominee of the Congress-led INDIA bloc.
The poll was necessitated after Jagdeep Dhankhar unexpectedly resigned as vice-president on July 21, citing health reasons.
Both the ruling NDA and the Opposition INDIA bloc held separate meetings on Monday in the Parliament complex, a show of strength, where they educated their respective MPs about the election process and conducted mock polls, exhorting their members to vote correctly.
Members of Parliament are not bound by party whips to vote in the vice presidential election, which takes place under a secret ballot system.
Three parties — the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) of Odisha, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) of Punjab, and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) of Telangana — have declared their intent to abstain from the polls.
The total strength of the electoral college stands at 781 MPs, 542 from the Lok Sabha and 238 from the Rajya Sabha, with one Lok Sabha and six Rajya Sabha seats currently vacant. The majority mark is 391.
NDA has the backing of 425 MPs, including support from the YSR Congress Party (11 MPs), which is not formally part of the NDA. The Opposition (INDIA bloc) has the support of 324 MPs.
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The NDA has deployed six Union Ministers to oversee voting efforts, Kiren Rijiju – Northeast, Prahlad Joshi – Southern states, Piyush Goyal – Uttar Pradesh, Nityanand Rai – Bihar. Other ministers are supervising MPs from their respective regions.
