After the third round of counting of votes in the Presidential polls, NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu crossed 50 per cent mark securing her win in the presidential battle against Opposition nominee Yashwant Sinha by a huge margin. Of the 3,219 valid votes counted so far, Murmu has bagged 2,161, while Sinha got 1,058.

Murmu, 64, is the first Adivasi and second woman to become the nation’s First Citizen and the Supreme Commander of India’s Armed Forces. Murmu was elected to two terms in the Odisha Assembly in 2000 and 2004, and served as a Minister from 2000 to 2004 in Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s BJD-BJP coalition government. She was sworn in as the first woman Governor of Jharkhand in 2015.

LEARNING FROM HOME/WITHOUT CLASSES/ BASICS

The President of India is elected through proportional representation using the means of the single transferable vote (Article 55(3)). The nominated members of either Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha or Legislative Assemblies of the States are not eligible to be included in the Electoral College.

The President is elected by an electoral college consisting of MPs of both Houses of Parliament and MLAs of the states and Delhi and Puducherry. Nominated members of Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha and the Assemblies, and members of state Legislative Councils, are not part of the electoral college.

As per Article 58 of the Constitution of India, the person to contest for the candidature of the President must be a citizen of India, and should should at least be 35 years old. Also, similar to a member of the Lok Sabha, the Presidential candidate can be disqualified on the ground of holding a an office of profit under Government of India or State Government.

The votes are weighted, their value determined by the population of each state as per Census 1971. The value of each MLA’s vote varies from a high of 208 in Uttar Pradesh to a low of 7 in Sikkim. This means that UP’s 403 MLAs contribute 208 × 403 = 83,824 votes to the electoral pool, while Sikkim’s 32 MLAs contribute 32 × 7 = 224 votes. The weighted votes from all the Assemblies add up to 5.43 lakh.