Hamid Ansari secured his re-election as vice-president with consummate ease, setting Congress on course to now seal the post of deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha for its candidate P J Kurien.
The Congress made a rare departure from tradition to renominate the incumbent, only the second after S Radhakrishnan, though this meant only a consolation for the former diplomat who had appeared to be the frontrunner for President before he was outmanoeuvred by Pranab Mukherjee’s supporters.
Tuesday’s election turned out to be a no-contest. Ansari defeated NDA nominee Jaswant Singh by 252 votes in the electoral college of 787 Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs. Of the 736 votes polled, Ansari secured 490 against Singh’s 238. Majority of the MPs, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, UPA chairwoman Sonia Gandhi, leader of oppositions in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, respectively, cast their votes in the first two hours of the polling. Rajya Sabha MPs Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha also cast their votes.
Fifty one MPs did not vote, while eight votes were declared invalid. The abstentions largely belonged to the BJD, TDP and RSP which had decided to stay away from the election. An ailing Vilasrao Deshmukh too failed to vote.
One more victory in the bag, the Congress decided to lose no time in pushing for Kurien’s election as deputy to Ansari. While the party has finalized the candidature of the Kerala MP, it is likely to seek formal approval from UPA allies at the meeting of the coordination committee on Wednesday.
A retired IFS officer and former VC of Aligarh Muslim University, Ansari was proposed for VP’s post in 2007 by the Left bloc, which was then supporting the UPA-I from outside. While the Left was divided over supporting Mukherjee, it had no problems in supporting Ansari for a second term.
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