THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

WHY THE ELECTIONS HAPPEN?

India as we all know is a republic as the name is also “Republic of India”, hence for the fulfilment of our duty as a republic we need to have an elected head of state and this elected head of state is also the first citizen of India known as the President of India, sitting in the Rashtrapati Bhavan for a term of 5 years, this position is one of the most if not the most important position in the Indian Democracy

Under the Constitution of India, there shall always be a President of India (See Article 52 of the Constitution). He holds the highest elective office in the country and is elected in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and the Presidential and vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952. The said Act is supplemented by the provisions of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Rules, 1974, and the said Act under Rules form a complete Code regulating all aspects of the conduct of elections to the Office of the President. The President holds office for a period of five years from the date on which he enters his office and, accordingly, an election is due to be held this year (2022) to elect the new President before the expiration of the term of the incumbent President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, on 24th July 2022.

The statement that there shall be a President of India signifies the fact that the Republic of India at all given times shall have a president, hence the president is elected by and takes an oath on 25th July 2022.

THE ELECTION PROCESS

The President is elected by an electoral college consisting of MPs of both Houses of Parliament and MLAs of the states and Delhi and Puducherry. Nominated members of Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha and the Assemblies, and members of state Legislative Councils, are not part of the electoral college

The votes are weighted, their value determined by the population of each state as per Census 1971. The value of each MLA’s vote varies from a high of 208 in Uttar Pradesh to a low of 7 in Sikkim. This means that UP’s 403 MLAs contribute 208 × 403 = 83,824 votes to the electoral pool, while Sikkim’s 32 MLAs contribute 32 × 7 = 224 votes. The weighted votes from all the Assemblies add up to 5.43 lakh

The process demands that the 776 MPs (543 in Lok Sabha, 233 in Rajya Sabha) should contribute the exact total of votes as the MLAs. Thus, the value of each MP’s vote is 5.43 lakh divided by 776, rounded off to 700. The combined electoral pool from the Assemblies and Parliament adds up to 10.86 lakh.

PREVIOUS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION’S SUMMARY

1952:The first election was a no-contest. Rajendra Prasad won with 5,07,400 votes. Chaudhary Hari Ram polled 1,954, contesting because he did not want Prasad to be elected unopposed. The Left fielded K T Shah, a former alumnus of the London School of Economics and a member of the Constituent Assembly, who got 92,827 votes. The fray also had Thatte Lakshman Ganesh (2,672) and Krishna Kumar Chatterjee (533).

1957: Prasad was fielded for a second by Congress. It was again a no-contest: he got 4,59,698 votes against Nagendra Narayan Das (2,000) and Chowdhry Hari Ram (2,672).

1962: The Congress fielded Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, who was Vice President during President Prasad’s tenure. He got 5,53,067 votes against Chowdhry Hari Ram (6,341) and Yamuna Prasad Trisulia (3,537).

1967: The Congress candidate, Vice President Zakir Hussain, won 4,71,244 votes against Kota Subbarao (3,63,971). Subbarao, who retired as Chief Justice of India that year, was the Opposition’s consensus candidate.

1969: This election, necessitated by the sudden passing of President Hussain, was the most controversial of them all. Under Article 65(1) of the Constitution, Vice-President V V Giri assumed office as acting President, but resigned in July 1969 as Vice President and also as acting President. Tensions within the Congress — between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and a group of veterans known as the Syndicate — came to a head when the party officially fielded Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy while Gandhi threw her weight behind Giri, contesting as an independent. She famously called on party MPs and MLAs to vote according to conscience. Giri won with 4,01,515 votes to Reddy’s 3,13,548. The Congress split after then-party president S Nijalingappa expelled Gandhi. Among other candidates, C D Deshmukh, fielded by Swatantra Party and Jana Sangh, polled 1,12,769. There were 12 more in the fray, and the law was changed to prevent non-serious candidates from contesting.

1974: The Congress fielded Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, and the opposition veteran Tridib Chaudhuri, a Lok Sabha MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party. Ahmed polled 7,65,587 votes to Chaudhuri’s 1,89,196.

1977: Following Ahmed’s death, Vice President B D Jatti took over as acting President. When the poll was held, 37 candidates filed their papers but on scrutiny, all but one were rejected. The only valid one was Congress’s Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, who was elected.

1982: The Congress’s Giani Zail Singh (7,54,113 votes) won against H R Khanna (2,82,685). Nine opposition parties had fielded Khanna, a Supreme Court judge who had resigned in protest against the appointment of M H Baig as CJI in 1977. Khanna had come into prominence a year before when he disagreed with majority judges that Article 21 can be suspended by the declaration of Emergency.

1987: The Left parties fielded legal luminary and former Supreme Court Justice V R Krishna Iyer against incumbent Vice President R Venkataraman, who won comfortably (7,40,148 votes against Iyer’s 2,81,550). The third contestant Mithilesh Kumar, an independent candidate from Bihar, got 2,223 votes. The elections became politically interesting as incumbent President Singh, whose equations with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had hit a low, was prodded to contest as an independent candidate by some Congress dissidents and Devi Lal of the Lok Dal(B), but he declined.

1992: The Congress’s Shanker Dayal Sharma (6,75,804 votes) won comfortably against the opposition’s George Gilbert Swell (3,46,485), a former Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker, a former Ambassador Norway and Burma, and a tribal who was a force behind the movement that culminated in statehood for Meghalaya. His candidature was pushed by former Prime Minister V P Singh and the BJP backed him. Two others were in the fray: Ram Jethmalani (2,704 votes) and the famous Kaka Joginder Singh aka Dharti-Pakad (1,135), who contested — and lost — over 300 elections during his lifetime.

1997: K R Narayanan, fielded by parties in the United Front government and the Congress and backed by the opposition BJP, won one of the most one-sided polls ever, polling 956,290 votes against former Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan’s 50,361. Seshan had the support of the Shiv Sena and some independent MLAs.

2002: The Congress and most opposition parties decided to back scientist A P J Abdul Kalam, the BJP’s choice. The Left fielded Captain Lakshmi Sahgal. Kalam (9,22,884) won a one-sided contest against Sahgal (1,07,366).

2007: Pratibha Patil, the UPA-Left nominee, became India’s first woman President with 6,38,116 votes against BJP candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (3,31,306 ). The Shiv Sena, then part of the NDA, chose to back Patil, who is from Maharashtra.

2012: UPA candidate Pranab Mukherjee became the 13th President, polling 713,763 votes against the BJP’s P A Sangma (3,15,987).

2017: In the last election, the Opposition fielded former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar against Kovind. She had the support of 17 Opposition parties but the JD(U) chose to support Kovind. Kovind bagged 7,02,044 votes, and Kumar 3,67,314.

2022: This time the government (NDA) candidate is Draupadi Murmu whereas the opposition has placed their bets on Yashwant Sinha for the elections scheduled to take place on July 18.