New Delhi: UPA candidate Hamid Ansari Tuesday defeated NDA nominee Jaswant Singh by a comfortable margin of 252 votes in the vice presidential election to secure another term in office. Ansari is only the second vice president after Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan to get two successive terms.
The outcome was announced by Lok Sabha Secretary General T.K. Viswanathan, the returning officer for the poll, minutes after the counting of votes ended Tuesday evening.
Ansari, 75, polled 490 first preference votes out of 728 valid votes cast in the election held earlier during the day. BJP leader Jaswant Singh polled 238 votes.
Viswanathan said that 787 members from the two houses were eligible to cast vote, and 736 exercised their franchise. Eight votes were found invalid.
He said that Ansari needed 365 votes to be declared elected.
"Therefore, Mohammad Hamid Ansari is duly elected as vice president of India," Viswanathan said.
Jaswant Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party MP and a former union minister, said the result was not disheartening for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which the BJP leads.
