Unease within Oppn over cross-voting in Vice Presidential polls

New Delhi: The Opposition camps were abuzz with whispered queries and insinuations on Wednesday about their losing vice presidential candidate B Sudershan Reddy failing to get the base in-house votes due to cross-voting, even in the form of seemingly choreographed invalidation of votes.

The episode made the political circles recall how some years ago a group of Haryana MLAs indulged in cross-votes by staging serial "invalid votes" by innovatively using an unauthorised pen to cast their votes to ambush their own Rajya Sabha candidate. Some Opposition functionaries also said that one Shiv Sena (UBT) MP, who is suspected of having invalidated the vote, is already in the process of crossing over to the NDA camp. Meanwhile, Congress MP Manish Tewari said various constituents of Opposition bloc should probe how the cross-voting happened. "If there was cross-voting, then it should be seriously investigated by each of the constituents of the INDIA bloc. Cross-voting is an extremely serious matter. If at all what you are saying is correct, or what is appearing in the public space or is being speculated has an iota of truth in it, then it deserves a systematic and clinical investigation", he told the media.

Congress MP Sabha Manickam Tagore, who was an Opposition booth agent for the VP election, said what was "very sad" for the Opposition was the "invalid" votes. "We fought for an ideological position. What was very sad for us was the invalid votes. Fifteen of our members' votes were invalid. Somebody has ticked it here, somebody ticked 'one' in another column. Like that it has happened. Invalid votes were of different natures. That is the main story that has to be understood," he said.