President election: Know how counting of votes is done

India on Thursday will know who will succeed incumbent Ram Nath Kovind to become the country's 15th President, as counting of votes for the presidential election begins at 11am at the Parliament House.

Ruling NDA's Droupadi Murmu and Opposition's Yashwant Sinha are pitted against each other in the contest, with votes clearly stacked in favour of Murmu, who, if elected, will be the first tribal woman to occupy the top constitutional post in the country.

Kovind's tenure is ending on July 24 and the new president will take oath on July 25.

The Election Commission had on Monday posted photographs of the sealed ballot boxes onboard flights accompanied by AROs.

According to the EC, each ballot box was issued an e-ticket under the name 'Mr Ballot Box'.

Polling for the presidential election was held between 10am to 5pm Monday at 31 locations including the Parliament house and 30 centres within state legislative assemblies.

There are also reports of cross-voting in favour of Murmu in a number of states. There is no whip issued to members in the presidential poll.

MPs of both, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, except nominated MPs, and all MLAs in legislative assembly in all states act as electors in the presidential poll.

A total of 4,809 electors, comprising 776 MPs and 4,033 elected MLAs, are entitled to vote in the election, but nominated MPs and MLAs, and Members of Legislative Council are not.

Over 99 per cent of the total electors had cast their ballot in the poll that took place Monday, according to the Election Commission.

Eight MPs, including BJP MPs Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dhotre, were among those who missed casting their votes.

Actor-politician Deol missed voting since he is abroad for medical treatment, while Dhotre gave it a pass since he was in the ICU.

Two MPs each from BJP and Shiv Sena, and one each from the BSP, Congress, SP, and AIMIM missed voting in the Monday polls.

Kovind had become the President after polling 7,02,044 votes out of a total of 10,69,358 votes, while his rival Meira Kumar polled only 3,67,314 votes.

How the votes are counted:

The votes for the election are being counted at parliament. First, the votes will be sorted and checked by returning officers. There will be two trays - one for Droupadi Murmu and the other for Yashwant Sinha.

The ballot papers of the MLAs will be sorted out first and then the MPs. The papers which list Murmu's name first will be placed in her tray, and those for Sinha in his.

The counting of votes will begin after the sorting is completed.

The winner of the Presidential election is not the candidate who gets the most votes, but the one who gets more votes than a certain quota. The quota is determined by adding the votes polled for each candidate, dividing the sum by two and adding '1' to it. The candidate who gets more votes than this value is the winner.

The results are most likely to be declared by the evening.

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 and therefore, they are not entitled to participate in the election. Similarly, members of the Legislative Councils are also not electors for the Presidential election.

The value of votes of the elected members of State Legislative Assemblies and both Houses of Parliament is governed by Article 55(2) of the Constitution.

The value of the vote of an MP will be 700. Those in preventive detention can vote and those in jail will have to apply for parole and if they get parole, they can vote. He stated that the total value of votes for MLAs for the 16th Presidential Election is 5,43,231. The total value of votes for MPs is 543200. The total value of the vote of electors for the Presidential Election, in 2022 is 10,86,431.