Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-backed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar is India's new Vice President. The former West Bengal Governer defeated Opposition candidate Margaret Alva by a whopping margin of 346 votes.
Dhankar got 528 votes while Alva secured 182 votes in the election, said LS Gen-Secy Utpal K Singh. 15 votes were termed invalid, he added.
A total of 725 MPs voted in the election, polling for which started at 10 AM and ended at 5 PM.
Who is Jagdeep Dhankar?
Born on May 18, 1951, in Kithana, a small village in Rajasthan, Dhankhar is currently the Governor of West Bengal. A lawyer by profession, Dhankhar forayed into politics in 1989 and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan that same year and became a Union Minister in 1990.
Dhankar, who practised in Rajasthan High Court and the Supreme Court, was designated a senior advocate in 1990, the same year he became a Union minister. He was also a member of the Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha from 1993 to 1998 representing Kishangarh constituency.
He was appointed as the Governor of West Bengal in July 2019 and has since had a tumultuous relationship with the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the state.
The TMC leadership has often accused him of acting as an "agent of the BJP", while the BJP in the state looked upon him as an "upholder of constitutional norms".
On his part, Dhankar has claimed he has gone by the rule book in pointing out issues to the Mamata Banerjee-led government and the state legislature.
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