The fate of Droupadi Murmu and Yashwant Sinha sealed in ballot boxes following peaceful Presidential election
New Delhi: Out of a total of 771 Members of Parliament entitled to vote (5 vacant) and similarly out of a total of 4025 Members of the Legislative Assemblies entitled to vote (6 vacant and 2 disqualified), over 99% cast their votes today for the Presidential election, which went off peacefully today, the Election Commission of India stated. Polling was held between 10 am to 5 pm at the 31 locations.
Two members namely, Anant Kumar Singh and Mahendra Hari Dalvi were not eligible to vote in the election today, owing to disqualification under Section 8 of Representation of People’s Act, 1951 subsequent to the judgement of the competent Court. Further, there are 5 vacancies in Rajya Sabha and 6 vacancies in State Legislative Assemblies. Therefore, there were a total of 4796 electors on the list of the Electoral College for this Presidential Election to participate in election.
There are two contesting candidates namely, Droupadi Murmu of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, and the combined Opposition’s Yashwant Sinha, for the 16th Presidential election.
The Commission said 100% voting by MLAs was reported from 11 States – Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tamil Nadu, and the Union Territory of Puducherry.
The Members of Parliament voted in New Delhi and the members of the State Legislative Assemblies, including the members of the Legislative Assemblies of NCT of Delhi and Union Territory of Puducherry, voted at the place fixed in each Legislative Assembly. Room No. 63 in the Parliament House in New Delhi and another 30 polling stations in all State Legislative Assembly Secretariats [including National Capital Territory of Delhi and the Union Territory of Puducherry] were fixed as places of the poll.
However, facilities were also provided by the Commission for any Member of Parliament/Member of Legislative Assembly to vote at a place of poll setup other than their own. Accordingly, 44 MPs were permitted to vote at State Headquarters, 9 MLAs at Parliament House and 02 MLAs in other State Headquarters.
The Commission said foolproof security arrangements were made to ensure safe custody and hassle-free transportation of empty ballot boxes from ECI to States on July 12 and 13, 2022. Similar transportation arrangements for the State teams have been made to bring back the 30 polled ballot boxes, it informed, adding that all the ballot boxes and other election materials would reach the Parliament House where counting will take place, by July 19, 2022. The counting of votes will be taken up on July 21, 2022, at 1100 hours.
The Election for the office of President of the Indian Republic is one of the most important elections, which the Election Commission of India conducts vide the mandate of Article 324 of the Constitution of India.
As per Article 54 of the Constitution, the President of India is elected by the Members of an Electoral College consisting of (a) the elected members of both Houses of Parliament, and (b) the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of all States [including National Capital Territory of Delhi and the Union Territory of Puducherry]. The Members nominated to either House of Parliament or the Legislative Assemblies of States, including the National Capital Territory of Delhi and Union Territory of Puducherry, are not eligible to be included in the Electoral College.
According to Article 55 (3) of the Constitution, the election to the Office of President of India is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote and the voting at such election is by secret ballot. The Constitution (Eighty-fourth) Amendment Act, 2001 provides that until the relevant population figures for the first census to be taken after the year 2026 have been published, the population of the States for the purposes of calculation of the value of votes for the Presidential Election shall mean the population as ascertained at the 1971-census.
– global bihari bureau
