Counting of votes for electing India's 14th President begins
The counting of votes for electing India's 14th President began at 11am under the supervision of the Returning Officer. The invalid votes, ones which are not cast in the prescribed format, will be removed first. The ballot box of the Parliament House will be the first to be opened, while those of the states will follow next, in alphabetical order.
The results of presidential election, for which close to 99 percent MPs and MLAs had voted on Monday, will be declared tomorrow. A simple mathematical calculation shows that National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Ram Nath Kovind is all set to win against Opposition's pick Meira Kumar.Counting of ballot papers will begin at 11 AM at Room Number 62 on the first floor of the Parliament House. Ballot boxes, collected from all states across India, has been kept in a strong room inside the House.The results for the race to the Rashtrapati Bhavan will be out officially by 5 PM.32 polling stations including the one in Parliament House were set up in various states. A total number of 4,896 electors, 4,120 MLAs and 776 elected MPs, were eligible to cast their ballot.Incumbent Pranab Mukherjee's term is ending on July 24 and the India's 14th president will take oath the next day.HOW THE COUNTING HAPPENSCounting of votes will be held under the supervision of the Lok Sabha secretary general Anoop Mishra, who is also the Returning Officer.The counting staff will begin their task by removing invalid ballots. Some votes may become invalid if the lawmaker didn't cast it in the prescribed format. A principle of proportional representation is followed under which the elector has to mark preferences against the names of the candidates. Marking of the first preference is compulsory.The ballot box of the Parliament House would be the first one to be opened, and then, the ballot boxes received from states would be counted on alphabetical basis.The votes would be counted on four separate tables and would have 8 rounds of counting.HOW IS THE WINNER SELECTEDPresidential election is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote. While the value of an MLA's vote depends on the population of the state he or she belongs to, the value of an MP's vote remains the same at 708.At the end of any round of counting, if one candidate gets more than more than 50 percent of the total votes polled then he is declared the winner.HOW AIRTHMETIC IS IN KOVIND'S FAVOURThe total value of votes of the electoral college (comprising elected MLAs and MPs) is 10,98,903. With the backing of NDA, the Dalit leader and former Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind is set to cross the halfway-mark and get more than 60 per cent votes.Besides parties belonging to the NDA, Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Biju Janata Dal, Telengana Rashtra Samithi in Telangana, different factions of AIADMK, and the YSR Congress (1.53 per cent) also had announced their backing for Kovind.Congress-led Opposition parties have a little over 35 per cent share in the electoral college. Independents and other smaller parties, who have not made their choice known, have two per cent.If elected, Ram Nath Kovind will be the second Dalit President of India after KR Narayanan.Also read:Voting in presidential election ends, result on July 20: All you need to know Foreign media on presidential poll: India set to crown candidate with Hindu nationalist roots as next PresidentPresidential election voters: 71 per cent crorepati, a third with criminal cases, 451 women