8/29/2014

How is Indias President elected? - The Hindu

Today's Paper IN SCHOOL

How is Indias President elected?
Shubashree Desikan

How do you elect your class leader? At times, it is just by a show of hands and the student who gets the maximum
support wins. When there are several candidates, a teacher might invite paper votes and then the votes are counted to
see who is the most popular.
But how does an entire nation elect its first citizen? The fourteenth President of India will be elected on 19 July this
year and the main contenders are believed to be Mr Pranab Mukherjee who has just resigned from the post of Union
Minister for Finance and Mr P.A. Sangma, former Lok Sabha speaker.
The electoral college
The Indian President is elected indirectly by an electoral college. The members of this college consist of:
a. the elected members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha
b. the elected members of the legislative assemblies of every state and the elected members of the legislative
assemblies of the Union territory of Puduchery and the national capital territory of New Delhi. Nominated members
to the two houses are not eligible to receive any votes.
As expected the process of electing the nations first citizen is not as simple as a show of hands.
Every elected MLA of a state is given a fixed number of votes. This number is equal to the population of the state
divided by the number of elected members of the legislative assembly of that state and further divided by thousand. If
this number is higher than 500 another vote is allocated to each member.
Every elected member of the two houses of Parliament will be given a number of votes. This is equal to the total of the
votes given to the members of the state assemblies divided by the number of members of Parliament who are voting.
For the purposes of calculating the votes, the population as ascertained by the 1971 census will be taken into account.
Confused? See the accompanying information box for an example of how things work.
The ballot paper
Unlike the Parliament and Assembly elections, the ballot paper does not contain symbols and party names. There are
two columns: the first contains the name of the candidate and the second is blank and the voter can indicate the order
of preference.
The election of the president has to be conducted before the present presidents term of office comes to an end. This is
because the country should not be without a President even for a day. If for some reason such as illness or death the
Presidential office is vacated before another may be elected, the vice president steps into the Presidents shoes and
acts as the president until the election is held. If for some reason both the president and vice president are
unavailable, the Chief Justice of India has to act as the president until the election is held.
Such a situation rose in 1969 and Mr M Hidayatullah who was the chief justice then took over as President for about
a month.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/how-is-indias-president-elected/article3617995.ece

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