The Election Commission of India (ECI) released notification for the election of Vice president of India, as current Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu term of office is ending on 10 August.
Election Commission notified the date of filing the candidature nomination till 19 July 2022 and candidates can withdraw their candidature till 22 July 2022 before 3 PM. The polling for the post will be scheduled on Saturday, 6 August 2022.
As per Article 66 of the Constitution of India, Vice President is elected on the bases of the Electorate College System. The Electorate College consists of members of both the houses, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, following the system of proportional representation employing the single transferable vote. The voting in the Vice President election is conducted by secret ballot.
In the proportional system, voters or members make preferences as many as the number of candidates. They have to mark first preference against any candidate to make the ballot paper valid and other preferences are optional.
In the 16th Vice President election, the Electorate College consists of 233 elected members and 12 nominated members of Rajya Sabha and 543 members of Lok Sabha. Electorate College constitutes a total of 788 members. Therefore, The members of the Electorate College are members of both Houses of Parliament. Although, the value of the vote will the be same and that is 1.
The concept of open voting is prohibited in the Vice President election and the respective parties cannot issue whipe to their Members of Parliament for the voting. The Election Commission gives a particular pen to electors to mark the ballot paper and in the case of the use of another pen, the ballot paper will be invalid.
Meanwhile, the Presidential poll is also scheduled for 18 July 2022. Although consensus on the joint candidate had not gotten that time between the Government and opposition, the BJP selected Draupadi Murmu and the Congress-led opposition selected Yashwant Sinha as the presidential candidate.
Therefore, it is possible that BJP would try to get a consensus on the Vice President candidate.
