Presidential Election India 2022: In India, the President is the highest citizen of the country. At present, the President of the country is Ram Nath Kovind. However, the Election Commission (ECI) has announced the 16th presidential election in the country (Presidential Election 2022).
According to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, voting for the Presidential election will be held on July 18. At the same time, a notification for this will be issued on June 15. The last date for nominations is June 29. Voting will be held on 18 July and the counting of votes will take place on 21 July.
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was sworn in as the President on 25 July 1977. Since then, every year on July 25, the President has been taking the oath. Last time the Presidential elections were held on 17th July and the results were declared on 20th July.
Political parties have started their preparations for the presidential election. The President is elected through the Electoral College system. In this, the MLAs of the Legislative Assemblies of all the states, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs vote. Why is the election of the President special and how are the elections held?
Previously, the election process was easy, but then it had to be difficult.
Any citizen of India can contest the presidential election any number of times. You must be at least 35 years of age to contest elections. In addition to being eligible to be a member of the Lok Sabha and not holding any office of profit, a candidate must have at least 50 proposers and 50 supporters. Initially, this number was 2-2 i.e. only two approvers and two nominating MLAs were needed to contest the presidential election, so it was very easy to contest in that era. This rule was also misused for about 20 years.
In 1974, by amending the constitution, the requirement of two MLAs was removed and this number was increased to 10-10. Then by an amendment in 1997, this number was increased to 50-50 i.e. now if a person wants to contest the election of the President, then he must know at least 100 MLAs who are participating in this election.
Who can't vote in the election?
In our country, the President is elected indirectly, that is, the public cannot vote for it. Nominated members and Legislative Councilors in the Rajya Sabha and the Legislative Council cannot participate in the electoral process. Only elected Rajya Sabha MPs, Lok Sabha MPs and MLAs can vote. If the Chief Minister of a state is a member of the Legislative Council, then he too cannot vote in the election of the President.
- Voting in the presidential election is done through the single transferable vote system. This means that a member of Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha can cast only one vote.
If the Legislative Assembly itself is dissolved in a state, then-
Article 71(4) of the Constitution clearly states that the election of the Presidential office shall not be stopped under any circumstances. Even if the assembly of a state is dissolved or assembly seats are vacant in many states, then elections for the post of President will be held on time.
The election is confidential, votes are cast by ballot.
The election of the highest citizen of the country is done secretly like in general elections. EVMs are not used in presidential elections but ballot papers are used.
Confidential voting means the electors cannot show their vote to anyone. If he/she does so, his/her vote will be void.
Apart from this, if a political party comes to know that one of its members is voting against the wishes of the party, then the party cannot issue a whip against its member.
Winning is not necessary even if you get the most votes.
In general, the candidate who gets the most votes is declared the winner of his/her seat, but the defeat or victory in the presidential election is not decided by the number of votes but by the value of the votes. In the presidential election, the candidate has to get more than half of the total value of the votes of MPs and MLAs.
At present, the weightage of the votes of the members of the electoral college or the Electoral College for the Presidential election is 1098903. The vote value of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly is 6,264, which is currently suspended. After subtracting this, at least 5,46,320 vote values would be needed to win the presidential election.
This is how the value of a member's vote is known.
Article 55 of the constitution talks about the value of votes. The method of how their value will be decided is also given. In UP, an MLA has a maximum of 208 votes. The total value of votes of all 403 MLAs is 83824. Similarly, an MLA of Sikkim has a minimum of 7 votes. The value of the total votes of all 32 MLAs is 224. So the question is how is the value of these MLAs decided. Let's know-
Value of votes of MLAs: To find out how many votes the MLA of a state has, the population of that state is divided by the number of assembly members of the state. The number that comes out after this is then divided by 1000. Then the ratio of the votes of an MLA of the state is derived from the marks obtained.
Value of MP's vote: Knowing the value of the votes of MPs is a bit easy. The value of the votes of all the MLAs of the country is divided by the total number of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs. Then the score obtained is the value of the vote of an MP. If the remainder is more than 0.5 after dividing like this, then the weightage gets increased by one. That is, the value of the vote of an MP is 708. That is, the total number of votes of 776 MPs (543 Lok Sabha and 233 Rajya Sabha) is 549408.
The calculation is done based on the 1971 population.
According to the Constitution (84th Amendment) Act 2001, at present, the population of the states is based on the census data of 1971, which will be changed after the publication of census data in 2026.