Hamid Ansari re-elected as Vice President

Posted on August 8, 2012 by sagarmedia

UPA candidate Hamid Ansari was on Tuesday re-elected as the Vice President, becoming the second person to get the second consecutive term as he defeated NDA nominee Jaswant Singh by a large margin of 252 votes.75-year-old Ansari, a former IFS officer, got 490 votes against 238 bagged by Singh out of 736 votes polled earlier in the day.Altogether 787 Members of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha were eligible to vote but 47 MPs did not cast their votes, who include ailing Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh who is admitted in a Chennai Hospital.
Eight votes were invalid, according to T K Vishwanathan, Lok Sabha Secretary General and Returning Officer for Vice Presidential poll.
Ansari is the second Vice President to be re-elected after S Radhakrishnan who was the first to get two terms from 1952 to 1962.
Formerly the Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Ansari’s name came as a surprise in 2007 election when the Left parties, supporting the UPA-I from outside, proposed him and the Congress-led alliance accepted it.
The Left parties, which faced divisions on the Presidential poll, however, had no problems in supporting Ansari for a second time.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said 21 members from BJD, 11 from TDP, 6 from Congress and supporting parties and two nominated members did not cast their votes.
Others who did not vote include 2 each from BJP, AGP, RSP and TRS and Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, one of the two members of YSR Congress. BJP members who did not vote were Shatrughan Sinha, who is was sick, and Dilip Singh Judev, whose mother was not well.
Trinamool Congress members Kakoli Dastidar and Kabir Suman were abroad. So was SP member Brij Bhushan Singh.
Out of the total 790 members of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha that form the electoral college for Vice Presidential poll, 3 are vacant with Pranab Mukherjee becoming President, Vijay Bahuguna Chief Minister of Uttarakhand and the election of BJP MP J Shanta having been set aside by a High Court.A Padma Shree awardee, Ansari became Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University in May, 2000 and held the post till March, 2002.Ansari also tried to innovate in the House proceedings when he shifted the Question Hour to post-lunch session to avoid loss of opportunity for members to question the government on account of routine disruptions in the morning.The move was given up after just a session when he found the members themselves being absent from the House when their questions were taken up and the government also not very enthusiastic about the move.
The monsoon session of Parliament opening on Wednesday promises to kick up a lot of heat and dust as Opposition parties are planning to raise issues like rising prices, economy and drought etc.Government managers have been insisting that they were ready for discussion on any issue.Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal expressed hope that like the last session, this session too would be a good and productive one as regards transaction of government business.Ahead of the session, UPA will project a united picture with the first meeting of the Coordination Committee of the ruling alliance scheduled tomorrow.
As many as 31 bills have been listed for consideration in the session, which will conclude on September 7. The bills include those on Forward Contracts, Banking laws, whistle-blowers and women’s reservation as also the Prevention of Bribery of Foreign Public Officials bill.While the much-talked about Lokpal bill has not been listed for consideration, the managers have been maintaining that it would be brought up expeditiously once the report from the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha is submitted.