Ram Nath Kovind is the next President, but BJP isn't satisfied

The BJP leadership, which spent a lot of time campaigning hard to secure each and every possible vote for its presidential candidate, is angry. For, the margin of win could have been better.

Among the 21 MPs whose votes were rejected as they strayed from the prescribed method for voting, 13 are from the BJP. The value of the votes lost by these 21 disqualified votes is 15,000.

"Silly mistakes is all I can say. The MPs were supposed to write '1' for their first preference Ramnath Kovind. They couldn't even do that simple task," said a BJP leader, requesting anonymity. Sources say some wrote "one" instead of "1" and some simply put a tick mark.

The party had organised classes for its MPs in Parliament and MLAs in state assembly about the process of voting.

The party may pull up the erring leaders. "We know whose vote has been rejected and senior leaders will be speaking to these MPs. Ordinary voters can vote clearly even though they have to pick between dozens of candidates on an EVM. They (the MPs) couldn't pick between two," said the BJP leader.

The party is carefully examining the votes to see if any of its MLAs defied party line as the poling witnessed largescale cross-voting in seven states. The leaders are happy that in most states the cross-voters were from the opposition camp. They voted for Mr Kovind rather than their own candidate Meira Kumar in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, WB, Punjab, Assam and Tripura.

The Congress on the other hand is worried as in Gujarat, at least 12 party MLAs are said to have voted for Kovind. This clearly is a sign of brewing dissent ahead of the assembly polls and voting for three Rajya Sabha seats on August 8. This also indicates that senior leader Shankarsinh Vaghela, who was once with the BJP seems to be on his way out.

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