NDA's Radhakrishnan elected next VP

New Delhi, Sep 9
NDA candidate CP Radhakrishnan was elected the next Vice President of India on Tuesday as he bagged 452 votes against the Opposition candidate B Sudershan Reddy's 300, winning the contest with a bigger than expected margin, indicating cross-voting from the rival camp.
Announcing the result of the Vice Presidential election this evening, Rajya Sabha Secretary General and Returning Officer P C Mody said 767 MPs cast their votes out of the total valid electors of 781 in a turnout of 98.2 per cent.
He said 752 ballots were valid and 15 were invalid, bringing down the required majority of first preference votes to 377. Though the victory of Radhakrishnan (67), currently the Maharashtra governor and a seasoned leader with an RSS background and decades-long stint first in the Jana Sangh and then the BJP in Tamil Nadu, was a foregone conclusion due to the ruling alliance's numerical edge but the extent of his victory margin is a setback to the opposition.  PTI