Rajya Sabha has vacancies from J&K during Vice-Presidential poll for second consecutive time
The members of Parliament from both the Houses will elect the 17th Vice-President on September 9.
Also read | NDA leaders authorise PM, Nadda to pick alliance candidate for Vice-President
The four seats from the Union Territory are vacant as the Election Commission has so far not held biennial polls to fill up the vacancies nearly 10 months after Assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir.
MLAs elect Rajya Sabha members of their respective States.
The Union Territory has been unrepresented in the Upper House of Parliament since February 15, 2021, the day when Ghulam Nabi Azad and Nazir Ahmed Laway finished their terms. Two other members, Fayaz Ahmed Mir and Shamsheer Singh Manhas, had completed their terms on February 10, the same year.
Jagdeep Dhankhar, who was elected as the Vice-President in 2022, quit on July 21, citing health issues. His term was till August 2027.
The Vice-President is elected by the members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, with nominated members of the Upper House also eligible to vote. At present, there are no nominated members in the Lok Sabha.
The 543-member Lok Sabha has one vacant seat — Basirhat in West Bengal — while there are six vacancies in the 245-member Rajya Sabha. Of the six vacancies in the Rajya Sabha, four are from Jammu and Kashmir, and one each from Punjab and Jharkhand.
The seat from Punjab fell vacant after AAP leader Sanjeev Arora quit following his election to the State Assembly in a recent bypoll.
The demise of JMM leader Shibu Soren has created a fresh vacancy in the Upper House from Jharkhand.
The effective strength of both the Houses together is 781 and the winning candidate will require 391 votes, considering that all eligible voters exercise their franchise.
In the Lok Sabha, the BJP-led NDA enjoys the support of 293 of the 542 members. The ruling alliance has the support of 129 members in the Rajya Sabha, which has an effective strength of 240, assuming that the nominated members vote in support of the NDA nominee.
Thus, the ruling alliance has the support of around 422 members.
Article 66 (1) of the Constitution provides that the Vice-Presidential election shall be held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote, and the voting at such an election shall be by secret ballot.
In this system, the elector has to mark preferences against the names of the candidates.
The Vice-President is the second-highest constitutional office in the country. He serves for a five-year term, but can continue to be in office, irrespective of the expiry of the term, until the successor assumes office.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
7 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Rahul alleges malpractice in voting: Maharashtra Cong to ‘reach out to every household to apprise people of wrongdoings'
Intensifying the nationwide protest against the alleged malpractices in election process launched by party leader Rahul Gandhi, the state Congress on Tuesday said it would appraise people in the state of the 'wrongdoings by reaching out to every household'. 'Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has proved the wrongdoings in the election process of the country. The Election Commission (EC), instead of responding to the queries raised, has served notice to him. The state Congress will further intensify the protest in Maharashtra,' said Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala, in-charge of party affairs in Maharashtra. He said the BJP and the Union government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi are finishing democracy. 'Free and fair elections are becoming impossible in the country. We had raised it in the Maharashtra Assembly election when we noticed a big change in voters' choice compared to three months prior to that during the Lok Sabha elections last year,' he added. 'The malpractices seen during the Maharashtra Assembly elections were also witnessed in the Haryana Assembly elections and now it is likely to be repeated in the Bihar elections,' he said. The EC does what the BJP-led Union government says and the BJP is busy defending the EC for the wrongdoings, said Chennithala. 'The state Congress will reach out to every household on the issue of malpractices in elections. We will do a signature campaign and tell the public about vote cheating,' he said. The Congress leader said the Mahayuti government is postponing local body elections deliberately so as to use funds of civic bodies to manage its finances as the government is facing a serious financial crisis due to its wrong schemes. The Congress has not taken any decision on a pre-poll alliance for the forthcoming civic polls, he said, adding the party leaders are still discussing it. Chennithala said the closeness of two cousins MNS chief Raj Thackeray and Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray was not a cause of concern for the Congress. 'MNS is not in our alliance. We don't know anything about the MNS and Sena (UBT) alliance, so we cannot comment on it. We don't have any issues if cousins are coming close but the alliance of their parties will be a political issue. We will discuss if it actually happens,' he said. State Congress chief Harshvardhan Sapkal said BJP rule in the country is destroying democracy and the party has chalked out a six-month programme to protest against it. 'The BJP always talks of a Congress-free country but 40 per cent of its leaders are imported from the Congress,' he said.
The Hindu
7 minutes ago
- The Hindu
No government school has closed down in Kerala in nine years: Minister
Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty has denied that government schools in Kerala are closing down. Not a single government school in the State was closed in the past nine years, the Minister said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. Union government statistics that showed a decline in government schools were baseless and an attempt to discredit the State, Mr. Sivankutty alleged. Union Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary, in reply to an unstarred question by K. Radhakrishnan, MP, in the Lok Sabha on closure of government schools across the country, had submitted that 205 schools had closed down from 2019-20 to 2023-24 (201 from 2021-22). Referring to the numbers, Mr. Sivankutty said these were related to multi-grade learning centres (MGLCs), started as part of District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), a Centrally sponsored scheme, in the early 1990s. Once the Right to Education was passed, these could not continue as schools and were gradually phased out. Facilities, including free transport, had been arranged for the MGLC students to shift to nearby schools. As per the figures presented in the Lok Sabha, there were 5,014 government schools in 2019-20. It rose to 5,020 in 2020-21, fell to 5010 a year later, and further declined to 4,811 in 2022-23 and 4,809 in 2023-24. the data were sourced from UDISE and UDISE+ databases on school education in the country. 'Not updated data' Officials say UDISE+ data is directly updated by schools and hence not properly validated by the General Education department. Sampoorna is the State's official school management portal for everything from student strength to textbooks distribution and scholarships, but the Union government does not use this data. It had been proposed sometime ago that data on the Sampoorna portal along with other parameter details be collected and submitted to the Union government. However, that did not happen. Moreover, the data on UDISE was not up to date, unlike in the State where it is updated on the sixth working day every year. The UDISE data quoted by the Union government was not updated for even the 2024-25 academic year, they point out. The MGLC were not really considered government schools, they point out. According to the Sametham portal maintained by the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education, there are 5,813 government schools in the State.
Mint
8 minutes ago
- Mint
‘Most spoilt and privileged woman': Kangana Ranaut slams Jaya Bachchan for pushing man trying to take selfie
BJP MP Kangana Ranaut slammed Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan, known for her no-nonsense personality, for pushing a man trying to take a selfie with her at the Constitution Club in Delhi on Tuesday. Without mincing her words, Kangana called Jaya the 'most spoilt and privileged woman.' Sharing the viral video of the incident on her Instagram stories, the BJP MP claimed that people put up with her 'tantrums/nonsense behaviour just because she is Amitabh Bachchan Ji's wife.' Insulting both Jaya Bachchan and the Samajwadi Party, Kangana Ranaut said, 'That Samajwadi topi looks like a rooster comb, while she looks like a fighting cock!!' 'Such disgrace and shame,' she added. Kangana Ranaut's IG story In the viral video, Jaya Bachchan can be seen pushing the man away and saying, 'Kya kar rahe hai aap (What are you doing?) What is this?' In the video, Jaya's fellow parliamentarian and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi is also seen standing near her. When Jaya shoves the man, Priyanka turns to look around and then walks towards the Club. Earlier, Jaya Bachchan blasted people in public. During the special debate on Operation Sindoor in the Parliament, the Rajya Sabha MP slammed the members of the treasury bench for interrupting her and said, 'Either you speak or I will speak.' Priyanka Chaturvedi, who was sitting beside Bachchan in the Rajya Sabha, also received a minor scolding from the Samajwadi Party leader. When Bachchan asked the treasury bench not to interrupt her when she was speaking, Chaturvedi was seen gesturing with her right arm. This caused Bachchan to turn towards the Sena UBT MP and say, 'Priyanka, don't control me.' Also, in July-August 2024, Jaya Bachchan got infuriated in the Rajya Sabha when she was introduced as 'Jaya Amitabh Bachchan' by the Upper House chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar. Expressing her strong disapproval of the way she was introduced, she said, 'I, Jaya Amitabh Bachchan, want to say this that I am an artist, and I understand body language and expressions. And sir, your tone is not acceptable. We are colleagues, sir. You may be sitting on the Chair...'
