Ansari gets second term as V-P

Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari was on Tuesday re-elected to office for a second consecutive term after defeating his rival Jaswant Singh by a margin of 252 votes.

Ansari,who was fielded by the ruling UPA,secured 490 votes,more than double the 238 votes polled by his rival. A total of 736 out of the 790 members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha,who comprise the electoral college,voted. Eight votes were declared invalid.

The effective strength of the electoral college is 787. There are two vacancies,caused by the resignations of President Pranab Mukherjee and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna. BJP Lok Sabha member from Bellary J Shantha could not vote due to a court case. Ansari was required to get past the half-way mark.

The absentees included 21 of the BJD,11 of the TDP,two each of the AGP,TRS and BJP,besides six of the UPA two of them from the Trinamool Congress,one from the Samajwadi Party and two nominated members of the Rajya Sabha. Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh,who had been admitted to a Chennai hospital in a critical condition and Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress did not vote.

The two BJP MPs who could not exercise their franchise were Shatrughan Sinha and Dilip Singh Judeo. The Trinamool absentees were Kabir Suman and Kakoli Dastidar. The SP member who did not show up was Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

Ansari was a serious contender for the UPA nomination for the Presidency. However,he had to settle down for a second shot at the Vice-Presidency after Pranab Mukherjee made the grade. He had the declared support of over 500 people,belonging to the UPA,Samajwadi Party,Bahujan Samaj Party and the two Communist parties.

Singh,who had been put up by the Opposition NDA,had the backing of AIADMK leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. Though Singh had hoped to get the support of Orissa Chief Minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik,the latter chose to abstain from the contest. Four other parties Telugu Desam,TRS,AGP and RSP also abstained from voting.

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Kolkata-born Ansari is the second Vice-President to get a second term,the first being S Radhakrishnan,some 50 years ago. A former IFS officer,75-year-old Ansari has served as Indias Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He was the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University from 2000 to 2002 and the Chairman of the National Commission for Minorities from 2006 to 2007. He was first elected the Vice-President in August 2007.

He owed his first stint as the Vice-President to his proximity to the CPM,which provided crucial support to the UPA-I. As the ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha,Ansari took certain innovative decisions,the foremost being that a starred question,listed for eliciting oral answers from a minister during Question Hour,would not lapse even if the questioner is absent.