India to get its 15th President today: How votes are counted
Droupadi Murmu, the nominee of the BJP-led ruling NDA will, in all probability, be the country's next President. On the other hand, the chances for Yashwant Sinha, the joint opposition's candidate, are very slim.
India will gets its fifteenth President on Thursday, as votes will be counted for presidential elections, for which MPs and MLAs participated in polling on July 18. Former Jharkhand governor Droupadi Murmu, the nominee of the BJP-led ruling NDA, is the odds-on favourite to be elevated to the country's highest constitutional office.
_1658075597052_1658328816450_1658328816450.jpg "Presidential candidates Droupadi Murmu and Yashwant Sinha in file pic.")
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On the other hand, the chances for Yashwant Sinha, the joint opposition's candidate, are extremely slim.
Meanwhile, here's how counting of votes for presidential elections takes place:
(1.) First, the returning officers will sort and check the votes that were cast.
(2.) During polling, MPs write down their order of preferences on ballot papers using green pens, while MLAs use pink pens.
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(3.) Meanwhile, during the counting, there will be two trays, one for each candidate, Murmu and Sinha.
(4.) The ballot papers of legislative assembly members will be sorted first, followed by sorting of ballot papers of parliamentarians.
(5.) The papers with Murmu's name will be placed in the tray with her name, and those for Sinha in the one with his name.
(6.) The counting will begin only after the sorting is completed.
(7) The value of each MP's vote is 700, totalling 543,200 for total 776 members of Parliament. The value of each legislator's vote depends on their state's population; the total value of votes of 4,033 MLAs is 543,231.
(8.) Therefore, as many as 4,809 electors vote during presidential elections, with the overall value of their votes being 1,086,431.
(9.) The nominee who polls more votes than the required quota, i.e 50% of total valid votes polled +1, is declared winner.
(10.) The victorious candidate will take oath on July 25, a day after the final day in office for the incumbent First Citizen, Ram Nath Kovind. Murmu, if elected, will be India's first tribal woman and second female President. She also has a host of other ‘firsts’ to her name.
