Hamid Ansari elected again as vice president

UPA candidate for vice president Hamid Ansari has won the race to office for a second time, beating NDA candidate Jaswant Singh with a huge margin.

Ansari got 490 votes, much on the expected lines, where as NDA candidate Jaswant Singh got only 238 votes. Of the total 787 MPs from both the houses, 736 cast their votes, eight of which were invalid.

Ansari, 75, a career diplomat, is the second vice president to get a send term of office after late philosopher-statesman S Radhakrishnan.

The electoral college that casts vote in the election of the vice president consist of members of both houses of Parliament in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote.

Nominated members of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha are also eligible to vote in the election of the vice president.

An affable and well-read person, Ansari was also the second choice of the Congress for the President's post, but lost out to Pranab Mukherjee due to differing views of coalition politics.

A Padmashree awardee, Ansari became vice-chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University in May 2000 after his stint as a career diplomat. He was vice chancellor of AMU till March 2002.

Ansari's name came as a surprise in 2007 election when the Left parties, supporting the UPA-I from outside, proposed him and the Congress-led alliance accepted it. The Left parties supported Ansari for the second time as well.