- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Wishes poured in after Jagdeep Dhankhar, the candidate backed by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was on Saturday (6) elected as the country’s new vice president.
Besides Indian president Droupadi Murmu and prime minister Narendra Modi, a number of central ministers such as Piyush Goyal, AR Meghwal and Pralhad Joshi and Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar congratulated the 71-year-old, Dhankar, a former governor of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, secured a landslide win over opposition candidate Margaret Alva.
Dhankhar received 528 seats while Alva got 182. The latter congratulated Dhankhar but said the decision taken by some of the opposition parties to vote for him damaged their credibility.
Dhankhar will succeed M Venkaiah Naidu, who became the vice president in 2017.
“Congratulations to Jagdeep Dhankhar on being elected the Vice President of India. The nation will benefit from your long and rich experience of public life. My best wishes for a productive and successful tenure,” Murmu said in a tweet.
Modi, who called Dhankar as a “kisan putra” (son of a farmer), said the country would gain immensely from his intellect and wisdom.
“Congratulations to Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar Ji on being elected India’s Vice President with resounding support across party lines. I am confident he will be an outstanding Vice President. Our nation will gain tremendously from his intellect and wisdom,” Modi said in a tweet.
“He will be a wonderful Rajya Sabha chairman, an outstanding Vice President. The nation is blessed to have the son of a farmer and an eminent jurist as VP of India. We’re fortunate we will have a chance to work with him,” said Goyal.
“I am so happy, congratulate him. It was a decisive & impressive victory. He is an eminent lawyer and a farmer, this is a rare combination,” said Joshi.
“This is a matter of happiness. Hailing from the small village of Jhunjhuna, studying in Sainik schools, he entered politics, and became an established lawyer and then a Governor. This shows his strengthened character. It will reflect in his term as VP as well,” Meghwal said.
Khattar highlighted that the newly elected vice president will address the farmers’ woes. “Jagdeep Dhankhar has won the Vice-Presidential election with a large majority. On the other hand, Margaret Alva got merely 182 votes. I congratulate him. He comes from a farming background. He will help address the farmers’ woes,” he said.
Born in Kithana village in Jhunjhunu district of the western Indian state of Rajasthan, Dhankhar studied in Sainik School, Chittorgarh, and earned degrees in science and law from the University of Rajasthan. Born to Gokal Chand and Kesari Devi, Jagdeep Dhankhar married Sudesh Dhankhar in 1979 and the two have a daughter called Kamna.
He enrolled with the Bar Council of Rajasthan in the late 1970s as an advocate and was designated as a senior advocate by the High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan in 1990. He was the senior-most designated senior advocate of the state when he took oath as the governor of Bengal in July 2019.
As a lawyer, Dhankhar had practised in the Supreme Court of India and appeared in various high courts as well.
Dhankhar, who had affiliation with the Janata Dal and the Indian National Congress earlier, has been a member of the Indian parliament from Rajasthan (1989-91) and the state’s assembly as well (1993-98). He has also served as a minister of state in the Indian government in 1990-91.
However, the most prominent phase of his political career before becoming the vice president happened in 2019 when he was appointed as the governor of Bengal by former Indian president Ram Nath Kovind. He had a number of conflicts with the Mamata Banerjee government of the state during his tenure and was often criticised vehemently by the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress.
He resigned as the governor on July 17, 2022, after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance nominated him as the vice presidential candidate.
[With agency inputs]
