NDA, INDIA to battle it out in election for India's 15th V-P

The 15th Vice President of India is all set to be elected on Tuesday, in an electoral battle of ballots that will test the unity and strength of both the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Opposition bloc although NDA's candidate CP Radhakrishnan looks set to win over former Supreme Court judge B Sudershan Reddy.

- Saubhadra Chatterji and Smriti Kak Ramachandran

Still, with Naveen Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and K Chandrasekhara Rao's Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) announcing their abstention from the election, the margin of victory is likely to be small. The BJD has seven MPs and the BRS four. The NDA, along with the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), has 429 MPs supporting Radhakrishnan while 324 Opposition MPs are supporting Reddy. The Vice President will be elected by members of both Houses of Parliament who will be a part of the electoral college, which has 786 votes but is currently at an effective strength of 781. Eleven lawmakers are set to abstain. Any candidate who gets at least 386 votes will be declared winner.

The polling will start at 10am at Vasudha hall in the new Parliament building-in a departure from the past when all such elections were held in the old Parliament House, now renamed as Samvidhan Sadan. "The polling will take place from 10am and close at 5pm on September 9 and the result will be declared on Tuesday," the Rajya Sabha Secretariat announced.