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.

Table 1: The value of votes of elected MLAs of different states at the 2017 Presidential Election

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

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.