NEW DELHI: The presidential polls have allowed the ruling UPA coalition to signal its unity when faced with a saffron challenge even though the choice of Patil was dictated by Left's opposition to nominees like home minister Shivraj Patil and power minister Sushil Shinde.

NDA has suffered a bit of bruising in terms of margin of defeat and instances of its MLAs cross-voting, but as its lead party, BJP can draw some solace from getting the unexpected support of AIADMK and INLD.

This demonstrated that in a situation where a choice has to be made between Congress and an alternative pole, BJP is a contender.

Patil was greeted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi immediately after her victory.

Her sweep began to build up from the start of counting in the morning in Parliament House. Taking up states in an alphabetical order, Andhra Pradesh gave her a solid lead with 223 of the 229 valid votes going into her kitty.

Shekhawat got two votes while four votes were declared invalid. Arunachal Pradesh was not a different story with Patil polling 58 votes and only one going to her rival.

A statewise break-up made it clear that despite running a high-voltage campaign targeting Patil, the Shekhawat camp actually did very little groundwork.

Surprisingly, even in NDA-ruled states like Karnataka and Nagaland, Patil polled more votes. Shekhawat drew a blank in Kerala, Tripura, Mizoram and West Bengal.

What surprised observers more was the pattern of cross-voting from the NDA strongholds. In Delhi, Patil picked up three votes in excess of the Congress strength in the assembly while one BJP member abstained.

In JD(U)-BJP ruled Bihar, Congress gained five additional votes suspected to have been cast by JD(U) legislators.