The time is near, and by the next week, we would be having a new President. Today is the day of voting. Competing for the position of India’s 14th President are the BJP- led NDA nominee Ram Nath Kovind and the Opposition Nominee Meira Kumar. The winner among these two candidates would take their place at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The current President Mr. Pranab Mukherjee would shift to his new home in Lutyens’ Delhi at 10 Rajaji Marg, a place where the former president Mr. APJ Abdul Kalam lived until his death in 2015. As per the President’s Pension Rules, 1962 (d), “A retired President shall be entitled without payment of rent to the use of a furnished residence anywhere in India at the choice of the retired President, without payment of water and electricity charges for the remainder of his life”.
Wanna know how the 2017 Presidential Elections would be held? Here’s everything you need to know:
#1 The 14th President of India would be elected by an Electoral College consisting of elected members of the Parliament, the State Legislative Assemblies and the Legislative Assemblies of the Union Territories of Puducherry and the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.
#2 The voting takes place through a secret ballot where the electors have different values to their votes.
#3 While each parliament member has a value of 708 votes. The value of votes of the State legislative assembly members is decided by dividing the state’s population by 1000 and then dividing the resulting figure again with the total selected number of legislators in a state. (As per the 84th Amendment to the Constitution of India, the Population figures used for the state would be derived from the 1971 census until the year 2026).
#4 The total value of the votes in this election is 10,98,903 votes, and the total number of electors is 4,896.
#5 A Presidential candidate needs more than 50% of the total votes for the Win (More than 549452 votes).
#6 The voting ballot boxes are spread across the different states of India and in the room no. 62 of the Parliament House in Delhi.
#7 Regular paper ballots would be used for the voting process, which would be valid only if a unique violet ink pen is used to put down the vote.
#8 The Parliament MP’s would vote on green Ballots and the members of the Legislative Assemblies(MLA) on Pink Ballots.
#9 While the voting would be done on Monday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, the counting of votes and the announcement of results would be done on 20th July 2017.
#10 A special farewell for the outgoing president Mr. Pranab Mukherjee would be held at the parliament house on 23rd July.
#11 On 25th July 2017, the Chief Justice of India- Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar will administer the oath to our new President.
As of now, the odds are in favor of the NDA candidate Ram Nath Kovind because of the strength of the BJP- led NDA, and also because of the fact that there many parties outside NDA which are supporting him. This battle has also been stated as a battle of ideologies of the BJP- NDA government and of the Joint Opposition. On the surface, it seems like Kovind certainly has more support than the Opposition rival Meira Kumar, but at the same time, the election results could go either way as there is always a certain degree of unpredictability in politics.
– Allen