14th Vice President of India

About Vice Presidents of India-

• The vice president of India is the deputy to the head of state of the Republic of India.
• The office of vice president is the second-highest constitutional office after the president and ranks second in the order of precedence and first in the line of succession to the presidency. 
• The vice president is also a member of the Parliament of India as the ex officio chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
• Article 66 of the Constitution of India states the manner of election of the vice president. 
• The vice president is elected indirectly by members of an electoral college consisting of the members of both Houses of Parliament and not the members of state legislative assembly by the system of proportional representation using single transferable votes and the voting is conducted by Election Commission of India via secret ballot.
• Once elected the vice president continues in office for a five-year term, but can continue in office irrespective of the expiry of the term, until a successor assumes office.
• He/She can be removed by a resolution passed by an effective majority in the Rajya Sabha. 
• He/She is responsible for the protection of the rights and privileges of the members of the Council of States. 
• He/She also decides whether a bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha is a financial bill or not.
• The vice president also acts as the chancellor of the central universities of India.

Do you know?

• There have been 13 vice presidents since the inception of the post in 1950. 

• The first vice president of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, took oath at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 13 May 1952. He later served as the president. 
• Out of 13 vice presidents, six of them later went on to become the president. They are Dr S Radhakrishnan, Dr Zakir Hussain, V V Giri, Ramaswami Venkataraman, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma and K R Narayanan.
• Following the death of Zakir Husain in 1969, V. V. Giri resigned from the post of vice president to contest the presidential election and got elected. 
• Krishna Kant has been the only one to die during his tenure.
• On 11 August 2017, Venkaiah Naidu was sworn in as the 13th vice president of India. He is also the first vice-president to be born after Independent India was formed.
• In August 2022, Dhankhar was elected as the 14th Vice President of India, securing 74.36 per cent – the highest ever votes received in the last six vice presidential elections held since 1997.