Pledged 495 votes, Venkaiah Naidu received 516 votes instead.
Nearly two dozen MPs of opposition parties defied their leadership and voted for the NDA's vice- presidential candidate M Venkaiah Naidu, BJP sources said today.
Naidu secured 516 votes against the pledged support of around 495.
With the former Union minister securing over 68 per cent of valid votes against 32 per cent of the opposition's candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who received 244 votes, the margin between two contestants at 272 was higher than Gandhi's tally.
Outgoing Vice-President Hamid Ansari had prevailed over his rivals by 252 and 233 votes in 2012 and 2007 polls, respectively.
What should cause concern among the opposition, including the Congress, the Left and the TMC, is that their candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi got only 19 votes more than their presidential nominee Meira Kumar even though 40 more MPs had pledged support to him.
Kumar had received votes of 225 MPs, while Gandhi was supported by 244. President Ram Nath Kovind had received support of 522 MPs.
The BJD, which has 28 members in Parliament, and the JD (U) with 12 MPs had switched over to the opposition camp after supporting the NDA in the presidential poll.
Despite desertion by 40 MPs, the NDA's vote count went down by only six, underlining major cross-voting in its favour.
In an electoral college of 785 eligible members, 771 votes were cast out of which 11 were declared invalid, according to officials.
Among the 14 members who could not cast their votes for a variety of reasons, four belonged to the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC, two each to the BJP, Congress and the IUML, and one each to the NCP and PMK. One nominated and one Independent member also could not cast their votes.
Polling officials said this was the highest turnout in the vice-presidential election. Before it, the highest number of votes in the poll was 759 in 2002 when BJP candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had won the election.
Gandhi got more votes than Meira Kumar: Opposition
Even though its nominee suffered a massive defeat in the vice-presidential poll, the opposition today said Gopalkrishna Gandhi had bagged more votes than Meira Kumar had garnered in the presidential election.
Congress general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad pointed out that opposition candidate Kumar had got 225 votes in the July 17 presidential election, whereas her counterpart in the vice-presidential poll, Gandhi, bagged 244 votes.
"The number of votes has gone up by 19. It is a good thing that the votes have increased instead of decreasing," he said.
Azad also claimed that the ruling NDA had "approached all the opposition parties", seeking support for its candidate M Venkaiah Naidu.
"Despite all the efforts of the government, our number (of votes) has increased over the last around 20 days, after the presidential election," he said, while thanking the opposition parties and their MPs for supporting Gandhi.
CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury too expressed satisfaction over the number of votes bagged by the opposition candidate going up since the presidential election.
He also dubbed the vice-presidential election as a political fight between two trends.
"We got more votes compared to the presidential election.
Those who want to strengthen the Constitution, had come together to field Gopalkrishna Gandhi. We are grateful to him (Gandhi) for agreeing to be the candidate of a united opposition," said Yechury.
Both Azad and Yechury said the opposition parties would look into the voting pattern of their respective MPs.
CPI national secretary D Raja congratulated Naidu on being elected as the next vice-president of the country.
"We hope he will uphold the Constitution and constitutional morality and be accommodative to all the parties as the Rajya Sabha chairman," he said.
Naidu bagged 516 of the total of 771 votes cast in the vice-presidential poll, while Gandhi could only manage 244. Of the 771 votes polled, 11 were found to be invalid.
Although, there are 785 MPs in both the Houses of Parliament, 14 members could not exercise their franchise.
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