New Delhi: Ram Nath Kovind’s triumph was an inevitable conclusion given the NDA’s numerical superiority over the Opposition, but his presidential bid got a push with lawmakers from rival cross-polling parties for him in several states including Gujarat and Mamata Banerjee West Bengal.
BJP general secretary Bhupender Yadav, Kovind’s chief electoral director, said about 116 lawmakers from rival parties, including Congress, appeared to have voted in favor of the NDA candidate.
Kovind, 71, defeated opposition candidate Meira Kumar, former speaker of Lok Sabha, after obtaining 65.65 percent of the votes in the polling station.
A former governor of Bihar, Kovind received 2,930 votes with a value of 7,042,044, said the return election Anoop Mishra. Kumar won 1,844 votes with a value of 3,67,314.
States where Kovind got the votes from the rival camp included West Bengal, where the BJP is locked in a bitter, and often bloody, struggle with the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Kovind got the votes of 11 deputies in the state, five more than the NDA count of six.
He also got the votes of seven lawmakers in the Left-governed Tripura, where BJP or its NDA allies have no MLA. These included six TMC MLAs that are likely to join the BJP.
Congress has much to worry about Gujarat, where Assembly elections are due later this year, with at least eight of its members seeming to have voted in favor of the NDA candidate. The party has 57 deputies in the state, but Meira Kumar got only 49 votes.
The Congress party is caught in a factional dispute in Gujarat between opposition leader Shankarsinh Vaghela and the head of the state party Bharatsinh Solanki on who would lead the Assembly’s election campaign.
In Maharashtra, the NDA candidate obtained 20 more votes than the alliance strength of 188 at the state assembly.
Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Goa, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi are, among other states, witnesses to cross-vote in favor of Kovind.
“Going by the opposition force at the Maharashtra Assembly, Meira Kumar should have obtained 90 votes, but secured only 77,” said a spokesman for BJP judge Madhav Bhandari.
“The opposition owes an explanation to the people for the loss of these 13 votes,” Bhandari said.
“By the strength of the alliance led by the BJP, Kovind should have obtained at least 185 votes – 122 from BJP and 63 from Shiv Sena – in addition to the votes of other alliance partners, but obtained 208 votes,” Bhandari said.
On the other hand, Kumar should have pocketed at least 90 votes – 83 of Congress-NCP combine, three from PWP, one from CPM, two from MIM and one from SP, Bhandari said. But he got only 77 votes, he said.
Of the state’s 288 deputies, 287 voted in the July 17 poll.
At least three of the 16 deputies of the Goa Congress were also suspected of having voted for Kovind.
“Yes, there was cross vote, we have convened a special meeting of the Congressional Legislature Party tomorrow to discuss the issue, we want to know who voted against it,” said opposition leader Chandrakant Kavlekar.
At the 40-member Goa Assembly, whose current strength has been reduced to 38 due to the resignation of two MLAs, the BJP has 12 members, Congress 16, GFP and POP three each, Independent 3 and NCP 1.
Assuming that the 12 members of the BJP, plus three of each of their allies, GFP, POP and three independents, voted for Kovind, his account would have been 21. However, he obtained 25 votes.
Reacting to cross-vote cases, Bhupender Yadav took an excavation at Meira Kumar for his appeal to the electoral college for a “vote of conscience”. “Many congressional legislators followed their conscience and voted for Kovind,” he said, giving Kumar a blow.
He said that of the 116 opposition lawmakers who appeared to have voted for the NDA candidate, 30-35 were deputies.
There is a secret ballot in the presidential elections and it is almost impossible to identify exactly which legislator voted against.
