Presidential election in India: How is the President of India Elected?
Presidential election in India: Everything you need to know about how the President is elected.
New Delhi: The Presidential election will be conducted on July 18th and the counting will be done on July 21, 2022. In the Presidential election a total of 4,809 electors will be voting.
Current President Ram Nath Kovind will be be completing his term on July 24, 2022. As per the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act 1952, the Election Commission had issued a notification calling the elections on or after the 60th day before the expiry of the term of the current President.
How is the President of India Elected?
The President of India is elected in a more complicated process than the members of the Lok Sabha or the Prime Minister.
In India, the President is elected by the members of an electoral college which consists of the elected members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha including those who are the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the states including Union Territories- Delhi and Puducherry.
Who are not eligible in the electoral college?
The nominated members to either House of Parliament or the Legislative Assemblies are not eligible in the electoral college and cannot vote.
How many electors?
A total of 4896 electors are involved in the voting process to elect President of India. With 543 members of Lok Sabha, 233 members of Rajya Sabha and 4120 members of the Legislative Assemblies.
How is Voting done?
The voting to elect a president is done based on a system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote. For this voting, there are no election symbol on the ballot paper.
Instead there two columns. The first column consists the candidates name and the second one has the order of preference.
The member of the electoral college marks his/her preference against the names of the candidate and then the votes are counted. Meanwhile, they do not abstain from voting and there is no ballot paper that can be cancelled on the grounds of no proper mark of preferences.
So far, India has had 14 Presidents based on this mechanism and process of election.
India is now waiting for the 15th President of India to be elected and then take his/ her oath.