Ever since the Vice-Presidential election, there has been an ongoing debate around cross-voting from the INDIA bloc for NDA nominee CP Radhakrishnan. The mystery took an interesting turn on Wednesday when BJP MP and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju thanked some Opposition MPs for voting for the government-nominated candidate. Following this, the Congress began asking whether the cross-voting was because of the "fear of agencies". It, however, accepted that some of the allies "stepped away".
VP Radhakrishnan won the Vice-Presidential elections on Tuesday after defeating B Sudarshan Reddy, the joint opposition candidate.
Rijiju thanked some of the INDIA bloc members for "voting with conscience" for Radhakrishnan. Shivsena (Shinde clan) MP Srikant Shinde also thanked some MPs from INDIA and the MVA blocs for their "conscience" voting for the government nominee.
Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is an alliance formed by the Opposition parties, including Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and NCP (SP) in Maharashtra. Shinde seemed to be pointing out some of the MPs belonging to the opposition.
On the other hand, Manickam Tagore, Congress Whip in the Lok Sabha, called another "vote chori" in the Vice-Presidential elections. He said, "Why is Shinde thanking INDIA MPs for voting with NDA? Why is Minister Kiren Rijiju celebrating 'conscience votes' from Opposition MPs? Is this really conscience? Or is this CBI/ED pressure and horse trading being justified as conscience?"
The Congress MP asked, "From Karnataka's Bengaluru Central to Aadhar-linked voter suppression to now the vice-presidential polls, is the Modi-Shah model only about winning through 'vote chori'? Will democracy survive if ministers boast about stealing votes instead of respecting the mandate?"
Congress, however, hasn't been able to establish who specifically cross-voted in the secret ballot, but there have been suspicions about some parties.