India's Vice Presidential Election: Who Are the Main Candidates?

The current tenure of Indian Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu ends on August 10, and the election is scheduled for August 6. The Vice President of India's position is the second most crucial in India after the President. The last date to file a nomination is today, July 19.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition led by Prime Minister Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has fielded the current West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar as its candidate, while the joint opposition party candidate for the post of vice president is Margaret Alva.

Both candidates vying for the vice-president's seat are lawyers, and have been federal ministers and governors.

Learn more details about them bellow.

Jagdeep Dhankhar

Seventy-one-year-old Jagdeep Dhankhar, the National Democratic Alliance's vice-presidential candidate, hails from the state of Rajasthan. He a a well-known lawyer who has been a member of the Rajasthan High Court and the Supreme Court of India.

Dhankhar was elected to the Parliament from Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu area for the first time in 1989 on a Janata Dal party ticket. He also served as the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs in 1990, in then-Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar's minority government.

After the government failed, he joined the Congress party and was elected as a legislator from Rajasthan's Kishangarh area in 1993.

Dhankhar joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2003 and in 2019, when the party came to power at the federal level, he was appointed West Bengal's state governor. In that post, he has regularly been in the news for his run-ins with West Bengal State Chief Mamata Banerjee, and at times has posted their communications on social media.

Dhankhar filed his vice presidential nomination on Monday, while flanked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah along with other cabinet ministers and NDA members.

Margaret Alva

Alva, a veteran Congresswoman, has held various positions from being a parliamentarian to union minister, and then governor of various states.

Alva was born in Mangaluru, Karnataka in 1942. She was first nominated to the upper house of Parliament in 1974 when she was just 32 years old. She served as Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs in the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government in 1984.

She later headed the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Women and Child Development.

In 1991, she was appointed the federal Minister of State for Personnel, Pension, Public Grievances and Administrative Reforms (linked to the Prime Minister), "where she initiated the process of administrative decentralization, taking governance to the grass roots," reported the India Today news site.

Alva also contested the national election in 1999 and won. She has also served as the Governor of Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand states.

According to India Today, Alva was the only Congress-appointed Governor to have completed her tenure under the then-newly-elected Narendra Modi government in 2014.

The leaders of as many as 17 opposition parties unanimously decided to pick Alva as their nominee for the post of Vice-President on Sunday.

BJP Introduces Dhankar as Farmer's Son, Which May Increase BJP's Vote Share in State Polls - Analyst

Comparing the significance of both Alva and Dhankhar, Shekhar Aiyar, a political analyst, told Sputnik, "Margaret Alva, a Christian, is politically inconsequential even on her home turf Karnataka. However, the election in Rajasthan (where Dhankhar belongs) is scheduled for next year. And, BJP is not ruling in Rajasthan."

"The BJP has introduced Dhankhar as a farmer's son, in an effort to connect (the party and his name) with all the farmers, at least from Rajasthan. If this works, BJP's vote share will for sure increase in the upcoming state polls," Aiyar further stressed.

"As of the present scenario, the BJP alone has 394 MPs, more than the majority mark of 390," Sanjay Kumar, a professor and expert on Indian politics, said. The electoral college in the vice-presidential polls comprises a total of 788 members of both houses of parliament.

"There is no concept of open voting in the election and showing the ballot to anyone under any circumstances in the case of presidential and vice-presidential elections," Kumar explained.

Stating that the parties cannot issue a whip to its parliamentarians in the matter of voting, Kumar said: "Hence, they can abstain from voting."

Explaining the importance of Vice-President, Shekhar Iyer, a political analyst and former journalist, said: "The Vice-President has to deal with states' ruling parties' parliamentarian and Treasury benches." Members of state assemblies elect parliamentarians in the upper house (Rajya Sabha); these members could be or could not be part of a federally ruling government.

"The BJP needed a sharp-witted and skilled politician to handle these members as the face-off between the ruling party members and other Parliamentary parties is more common than the lower house of the parliament," Iyer added.

Members of the lower house (Lok Sabha) are elected in a national election by general public; there BJP has the majority.

"NDA has less numbers in the upper house. But it is the duty of the vice-president to run the upper house smoothly so that it can pass more Bills," Iyer explained.

The voting for the Vice-President's post will be held in parliament.

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