Parliament

How India will elect its next President

Itika Singh , Mridhula Raghavan - June 7, 2022

Mr. Ramnath Kovind completes his tenure as President in July.  With the Election
Commission of India expected to notify the election dates this week, we look at
how India will elect its next President.  

As the Head of the State, the President is a key part of Parliament.  The President
calls the two Houses of Parliament into session on the advice of the Council of
Ministers.  A Bill passed by the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha does not become a
law unless assented to by the President.  Further, when Parliament is not in session,
the President holds the power to sign a law with immediate effect through an
Ordinance.

Who elects the President?

The manner of election of the President is provided in Article 55 of the
Constitution.  Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies
(MPs and MLAs) including elected representatives from the Union Territories
(UTs) of Delhi and Puducherry form the electoral college, which elects the
President.  At least 50 elected representatives must propose a candidate, who must
then be seconded by 50 other electors to run for the President's office.  Members of
Legislative Councils and the 12 nominated members of Rajya Sabha do not
participate in the voting process.

The history behind having proposers and seconders 

The requirement of having a certain number of electors propose a candidate was
introduced after the experience of the first five Presidential elections.  It was
common then for several candidates to put themselves up for election when they
did not have a remote chance of getting elected.  In the 1967 Presidential elections,
17 candidates contested, but nine of them did not win a single vote.  This repeated
again in the 1969 elections, when out of 15 candidates, five did not secure any
votes.
To discourage the practice, candidates had to secure at least 10 proposers and
seconders each to contest the elections from the 1974 election onwards.  A
compulsory security deposit of Rs 2,500 was also introduced.  The changes were
brought in through an amendment to the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Act,
1952. 

In 1997, the Act was further amended to increase the security deposit to Rs 15,000
and the minimum number of proposers and seconders to 50 each.

How are the votes calculated?

The Presidential election uses a special voting to tally the votes.  A different voting
weightage is assigned to an MP and an MLA.  The value of each MLA's vote is
determined based on the population of their state and the number of MLAs.  For
instance, an MLA from UP has a value of 208 while an MLA from Sikkim has 7
(see Table 1).  Due to a Constitutional Amendment passed in 2002, the population
of the state as per the 1971 census is taken for the calculation.

The value of an MP's vote is the sum of all votes of MLAs across the country
divided by the number of elected MPs.  

How will the numbers look in 2022?

In the 2017 Presidential elections, electors from 31 states and the UTs of Delhi and
Puducherry participated. However, in 2019, with the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)
Reorganization Act, the number of states were reduced to 30. The J&K Assembly
was dissolved as per the Act and a new legislature for the UT of J&K is yet to be
reconstituted. UTs with legislatures were not originally part of the electoral college
for the election of the President. The Constitution was amended in 1992 to
specifically include the UTs of Delhi and Puducherry. Note that for MLAs from
J&K to participate in future Presidential elections, a similar Constitutional
amendment would be required to be passed by Parliament.

Based on the assumption that J&K is not included in the 2022 Presidential election,
the total number of votes of MLAs in 2022 elections will have to be adjusted.  The
 87 Jammu and Kashmir MLAs must be removed from the total number of MLAs
of 4,120.  Jammu and Kashmir’s contributing vote share of 6,264 must also be
reduced from the total vote share of 549,495.  Adjusting for these changes, 4,033
MLAs will participate in the 2022 elections and the combined vote share of all
MLAs will add up to 543,231.

Total value of
Number of Population (1971 Value of vote of
Name of State votes for the
Assembly seats Census) each MLA
state (B x D)

A B C D E

Andhra Pradesh 175 2,78,00,586 159 27,825

Arunachal Pradesh 60 4,67,511 8 480

Assam 126 1,46,25,152 116 14,616

Bihar 243 4,21,26,236 173 42,039

Chhattisgarh 90 1,16,37,494 129 11,610

Goa 40 7,95,120 20 800

Gujarat 182 2,66,97,475 147 26,754

Haryana 90 1,00,36,808 112 10,080

Himachal Pradesh 68 34,60,434 51 3,468

Jammu and Kashmir 87 63,00,000 72 6,264

Jharkhand 81 1,42,27,133 176 14,256

Karnataka 224 2,92,99,014 131 29,344

Kerala 140 2,13,47,375 152 21,280

Madhya Pradesh 230 3,00,16,625 131 30,130

Maharashtra 288 5,04,12,235 175 50,400

Manipur 60 10,72,753 18 1,080

Meghalaya 60 10,11,699 17 1,020

Mizoram 40 3,32,390 8 320

Nagaland 60 5,16,449 9 540

Odisha 147 2,19,44,615 149 21,903

Punjab 117 1,35,51,060 116 13,572

Rajasthan 200 2,57,65,806 129 25,800

Sikkim 32 2,09,843 7 224

Tamil Nadu 234 4,11,99,168 176 41,184

Telangana 119 1,57,02,122 132 15,708

Tripura 60 15,56,342 26 1,560

Uttarakhand 70 44,91,239 64 4,480

Uttar Pradesh 403 8,38,49,905 208 83,824

West Bengal 294 4,43,12,011 151 44,394

NCT of Delhi 70 40,65,698 58 4,060

Puducherry 30 4,71,707 16 480

Total 4,120 54,93,02,005   5,49,495

Table 1: The value of votes of elected MLAs of different states at the 2017
Presidential Election
Source: Election Commission of India (2017); PRS.

The value of an MP’s vote correspondingly will change from 708 in 2017 to 700 in
2022. 
Value of one MP's vote =   Total value of all votes of MLAs      =   543231     =  
700 
                                              Total number of elected MPs                 776

Note that the value of an MP’s vote is rounded off to the closest whole number.
This brings the combined value of the votes of all MPs to 543,200 (700 x 776). 

What is the number of votes required to win?

The voting for the Presidential elections is done through the system of single
transferable vote. In this system, electors rank the candidates in the order of their
preference. The winning candidate must secure more than half of the total value of
valid votes to win the election. This is known as the quota. 

Assuming that each elector casts his vote and that each vote is valid:

Quota = Total value of MP’s votes + Total value of MLA’s votes + 1                      

                                                        2

= 543200 + 543231 +1     =   1086431 +1     =    543,216 

                2                                   2

The anti-defection law which disallows MPs from crossing the party line does not
apply to the Presidential election. This means that the MPs and MLAs can keep
their ballot secret.  

The counting of votes takes place in rounds. In Round 1, only the first preference
marked on each ballot is counted. If any of the candidates secures the quota at this
stage, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate secures the quota in the first
round, then another round of counting takes place. In this round, the votes cast to
the candidate who secures the least number of votes in Round 1 are transferred.
This means that these votes are now added to the second preference candidate
marked on each ballot. This process is repeated till only one candidate remains.
Note that it is not compulsory for an elector to mark his preference for all
candidates. If no second preference is marked, then the ballots are treated as
exhausted ballots in Round 2 and are not counted further.  

The fifth Presidential election which elected Mr. VV Giri is the only instance when
a candidate did not secure the quota in the first round.  The second preference
votes were then evaluated and Mr. Giri secured 4,20,077 of the 8,36,337 votes and
was declared the President.

The only President of India to win unopposed 

India’s sixth President, Mr. Neelam Sanjiva Reddy who served from 1977 to 1982
was the only President to be elected unopposed.  37 candidates had filed their
nominations for the 1977 elections, however on scrutiny, the nomination papers of
36 candidates were rejected by the Returning Officer and Mr. Reddy was the only
candidate standing.