Cross-voting inflated Ansari's victory edge

New Delhi, Aug 11: The victory margin of the ruling UPA-Left's candidate Hamid Ansari in the Vice Presidential polls got inflated by a substantial amount of cross voting in his favour.

Ansari who was expected to secure 425 votes from the Members of the Parliament finally ended up with 455 votes in his favour, thirty more than the expected tally.

BJP-led NDA's candidate Najma Heptullah, who was closely associated with the Congress party for over three decades before joining the BJP ahead of the 2004 general elections, came a distant second at 222 votes, 18 less than the expected votes.

United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) or the Third Front's candidate, Rashid Masood secured the least votes in the triangular contest by getting only 75 votes in his favour, six less than the expected figure of 81.

Ansari's official representative during the polls, Congress leader Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, said that he was expecting 463 votes in his candidate's favour, but admitted that there was a substantial amount of cross voting from the NDA side.

He said that the margin would have been more since three votes favouring Ansari turned out to be invalid and five supportive MPs did not turn up for the voting.

A total of ten votes were declared invalid in today's polling with 21 members abstaining from the polls.

During the recently concluded Presidential polls also BJP backed independent candidate Bhairon Singh Sekhawat had to suffer a greater margin of defeat from UPA's nominee due to the cross voting against him.

ANI
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