- By Soumyaroop Mukherjee
- Tue, 09 Sep 2025 01:50 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Vice President Elections 2025: Voting is underway to elect the next Vice President of India. The election to the Vice President post was necessitated after former VEEP Jagdeep Dhankar’s sudden resignation in July, citing health issues. BJP-led NDA has fielded Maharashtra Governor CP Radhakrishnan, while the opposition INDIA Bloc has placed its faith in former Supreme Court Judge, Justice B Sudershan Reddy.
The electoral college for the Vice Presidential election comprises 788 votes - 245 from the Rajya Sabha and 543 from the Lok Sabha. The 12 nominated candidates from the Rajya Sabha will also be eligible for voting.
Currently, there are 781 votes, with 1 seat vacant in the Rajya Sabha and 6 in the Lok Sabha. The majority mark for this election stands at 391. In terms of alliances, the NDA has 293 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 129 MPs in the Rajya Sabha, while the INDIA bloc has the backing of around 325 parliamentarians in both houses.
Which Parties Abstained From Voting In The Vice Presidential Elections?
Biju Janata Dal (BJD)
Former Chief Minister and BJD Supremo Biju Patnaik has announced that the MPs from his party will not vote in the ongoing elections to keep the party’s conflict of interest in check. The party said that it wanted to keep an “equi-distance” with both the NDA and the INDIA Bloc alliances to serve the larger interests of the party at the national level.
Currently, the party has seven MPs in the Rajya Sabha:
Niranjan Bishi
Sulata Deo
Muzibulla Khan
Subhasish Khuntia
Manas Ranjan Mangaraj
Sasmit Patra
Debashish Samantaray.
The party does not have any representation in the Lok Sabha.
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS)
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has also decided to boycott the election in solidarity with the 71 lakh farmers of Telangana who are facing an acute shortage of urea.
"For the last 20 days, BRS has been warning both state and central governments about the shortage of urea. Yet they have failed to respond. As a mark of protest and in solidarity with 71 lakh Telangana farmers, BRS has decided not to participate in the Vice President election. If NOTA was an option, we would have chosen it," said BRS Working President KT Rama Rao.
BRS has four MPs in the Rajya Sabha:
Damodar Rao Divakonda Reddy
B Parthasaradhi Reddy
KR Suresh Reddy
Ravi Chandra Vaddiraju
However, BRS does not have any representation in the Lok Sabha.
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Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)
The Shiromani Akali Dal has also decided to abstain from voting in the vice-president elections as a mark of protest against the Centre and State government’s ignorance of the ‘devastating’ flood situation in Punjab.
"Punjab and Punjabis have always stood by the nation whenever and wherever there has been a crisis. But today, Punjabis themselves face a very severe crisis because of unprecedented floods. Almost one-third of the state lies submerged under water with houses and crops completely destroyed," the party wrote on X.
"Neither the state government nor the Centre have come forward to help Punjabis in any way. The crisis is being fought by Punjabis in general and Sikhs in particular without any help from the state or the Centre," it said.
Former Union Cabinet Minister of Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal is the only MP representing SAD in the Lok Sabha, while the party has no representation in the Rajya Sabha.
