5 Key Points About Jagdeep Dhankhar, India’s New Vice President
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate and former West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar was elected as the 14th Vice-President of India on Saturday, sweeping away the vote bank and defeating joint opposition candidate Margaret Alva.
Jagdeep Dhankhar received 528 votes while Margaret Alva got 182 votes.
With securing 72.8% votes against his rival, Dhankhar’s victory clearly signals the continued supremacy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP now holds all the key positions from President, V-P to Lok Sabha Speaker.
Jagdeep Dhankhar’s victory margin by securing 72.8% of the 725 valid votes cast during the V-P polls is the highest margin in the last six vice-presidential polls since 1997, TOI reported.
While KR Narayanan still leads the list for having the highest victory margin by securing 700 of the 701 votes cast in 1992, Dhankhar’s performance in the latest polls outshined Naidu’s 2017 performance by 2%.
The 71-year-old Jagdeep Dhankar is the first BJP nominee for the V-P post to not have started his political journey in the Sangh Parivar.
Congress’ Mohammad Hamid Ansari won 60.51% votes of the total 762 valid votes in the 2007 Vice-President Election. He remained V-P from 2007 to 2017.
In the 2017 V-P polls, Venkaiah Naidu won with 67.89% votes of the total 760 valid votes.
Key facts about new V-P Jagdeep Dhankhar
- Jagdeep Dhankhar, a Jat, was born in 1951 into a farmer’s family in Kithana, a small village in Rajasthan.
- Mr Dhankhar started as a lawyer and has practised in the Supreme Court and the Rajasthan High Court. He was designated a senior advocate in 1990, a year after he entered active politics.
- He was closely associated with former deputy prime minister of India Chaudhary Devi Lal and followed his mentor when the latter walked out of the VP Singh government and became a union minister in 1990 in the minority government led by Chandra Shekhar.
- He joined the Congress when PV Narasimha Rao became the prime minister. But with the rise of Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, he changed ships to the BJP.
- Mr Dhankhar was appointed as the Governor of West Bengal in July 2019. During his tenure, he had regular run-ins with chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
- Jagdeep Dhankhar is the second Vice-President from Rajasthan after Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
- agdeep joined BJP in 2003. Also, he had fought many legal cases against RSS leaders in his career, according to a media outlet. One such case was against RSS leader Indresh Kumar.
With Thanks Reference to: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/5-key-points-about-jagdeep-dhankhar-indias-new-vice-president-3231699 , india today(https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/jagdeep-dhankhar-vice-presidential-poll-victory-margin-highes-1984752-2022-08-07)
