Voting is under way for a direct contest between NDA’s C.P. Radhakrishnan and the Opposition’s B. Sudershan Reddy for Tuesday’s (September 9, 2025) vice-presidential election, with the BJP-led alliance having a clear edge in the poll necessitated due to the sudden resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar.

Both the ruling NDA and the Opposition INDIA bloc held separate meetings on Monday in the Parliament complex, a show of strength, where they educated their respective MPs about the election process and conducted mock polls, exhorting their members to vote correctly.

Polling for the vice president election, in which members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are eligible to vote, began at 10 a.m. in the new Parliament building and continue till 5 p.m. Counting of votes will begin at 6 p.m., and the result will be out later in the evening.

Members of Parliament are not bound by party whips to vote in the vice presidential election, which takes place under a secret ballot system.

Three parties — the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) of Odisha, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) of Punjab, and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) of Telangana — have declared their intent to abstain from the polls. Their declaration, though, makes little difference to the poll arithmetic.