As expected, NDA candidate Draupadi Murmu has won the election to become the next president of India, defeating opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha by a wide margin.
After the end of counting that spanned four rounds, Draupadi Murmu received 2,824 votes, the value of which is 6,76,803. Yashwant Sinha won 1877 votes valued at 3,80,177. She needed total 5,28,491 votes in terms of value, which she had already crossed after the third round of counting. The Secretary General of Rajya Sabha informed that total 4754 votes were polled, out of which 4701 were found valid and the rest 53 were invalid.
“As 1st preference votes secured by Draupadi Murmu were greater than the requisite quota, I in my capacity as Returning Officer declare that she has been elected to office of President of India”, declared PC Mody, secretary general of Rajya Sabha.
Presidential Election concluded with declaration of result…4754 votes polled, out of which 4701 valid & 53 invalid…The quota (for a candidate to be elected the President) was 5,28,491. #DroupadiMurmu secured 2824 first preference votes-value of which is 6,76,803: Secry Gen,RS pic.twitter.com/Tg0pbuHbGu
— ANI (@ANI) July 21, 2022
After the 3rd round, she had got 2161 votes, which translates to 5,77,777 in terms of the value of the votes. As the total value of valid votes polled in the parliament and in state assemblies was 10,56,982, Draupadi Murmu had already crossed the 50% mark. Yashwant Sinha had own 1058 votes after third round, value of which was 2,61,062.
So, upto this round, the cumulative total is – total valid votes is 3219 with total value of 8,38,839 of which Droupadi Murmu gets 2161 votes of the value of 5,77,777. Yashwant Sinha get 1058 votes of the value of 2,61,062: PC Mody, Secretary General, Rajya Sabha pic.twitter.com/nMfhwu16um
— ANI (@ANI) July 21, 2022
After the first round where the votes of the parliament were counted, Murmu had won 540 votes with a value of 3,78,000, and Yashwant Sinha won 208 votes with a value of 1,45,600. The votes of MLAs were counted from second round onwards in alphabetical order. In the second round, Murmu won 809 votes valued at 1,05,299 and Yashwant Sinha got 329 votes valued at 44,276. Similarly in third round, they received 812 and 521 votes respectively, which included votes of Karnataka, Kerala, MP, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Punjab.
It is notable that the result of the presidential election in India is determined by the value of the votes, not by the number of votes. And the value varies from voters of different lawmakers.
While the value of a vote of a MP, both from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, is 700, the value is different for each state assemblies, depending on the population. Value of a vote of an MLA from Mizoram or Arunachal is 8, while the same for an MLA from Uttar Pradesh is 208. The total value of MPs and the total value of MLAs is roughly same.
MLA vote value is calculated by dividing the population of a state or UT by the number of assembly seats multiplies by 1000. While for MP, the formula is total value votes of MLAs of a state/UT divided by total number of MPs in both houses of parliament.
Draupadi Murmu becomes the first tribal woman to hold the country’s highest constitutional position.
According to the reports, the process of counting ballots began at around 11 am on Thursday. Ballot papers from all jurisdictions had arrived at Parliament House by 11 am and election officials began the counting in Chamber 63, Parliament’s secure room where the boxes are secured around the clock. NDA candidate Draupadi Murmu had a clear edge over Opposition Yashwant Sinha in this election as several political parties including the Janata Dal United (JDU), All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and 40 others had extended support to Murmu.
However, while a total of 44 political parties supported Murmu, opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha had 34 political parties standing behind him. The parties that supported Sinha included the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Kerala Congress Jacob (KCJ), Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Communist Party of India (CPI), INC, AITC, and more.
Political career of Draupadi Murmu
As reported earlier, Murmu has a political career spanning over 20 years. Hailing from Odisha, she was born in a Santal Tribal family on June 20, 1958, in village Uparbeda of district Mayurbhanj. She attained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ramadevi Women’s College in Bhubaneswar and then worked as a Junior Assistant in Irrigation and Power Department from 1979 to 1983 in the Odisha government.
In 1994, she joined as a teacher at Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Centre, Rairangpur, and continued serving at the institute till 1997. Murmu was later elected as a councilor in 1997 and became the vice-chairperson of the Rairangpur NAC. She also became the MLA from the same constituency.
Further in the year 2000, she became Minister of State (Independent Charge) at the Transport and Commerce Department in the Odisha government and served till 2004 when BJP was in a coalition government with Naveen Patnaik’s BJD. During the same period, she also handled the Department of Animal Husbandry and Fisheries as Minister of State. From the year 2002 to 2009, Murmu was a national executive member of BJP’s ST Morcha. She served as state president for the same between 2006 to 2009.
From the year 2013 to April 2015, she served as a national executive member of ST Morcha. And later from the year 2015 to 2021, she served as Honorable Governor of Jharkhand. She was the first woman Governor for the state and the first female tribal leader to serve as a Governor in any Indian state. In 2007, Murmu was awarded the ‘Neelkanth Award for Best MLA by Odisha Legislative Assembly.
The voting for the next President of India took place on July 18 with around 4,800 MPs and MLAs casting their vote to choose India’s 15th President. After the ballots have been counted on July 21, the newly elected President Draupadi Murmu is supposed to take the oath of office on July 25, a day after earlier President Ram Nath Kovind is scheduled to vacate the office.
