Republic Of India Gets A New President!

The Republic of India has got a new President elected on July 22, 2012. Pranab Mukherjee, the former Finance Minister and the chief trouble shooter for the coalition government of India, has been declared elected for the top office. The poll for the post took place on 19th July and counting of votes was taken from the morning of 22nd July.

As expected, Pranab Mukherjee swept the elections winning nearly 70 percent of total votes cast. He got astounding support from the members of the Indian Parliament irrespective of party lines. The votes in the Indian states split up depending on which political party the particular state government belonged to, but there were surprises too in some of them in favor of Pranab. The fact that Pranab Mukherjee was a candidate no political party could possibly object got vindicated in the results.

It had been a straight contest between the UPA-2 (United Progressive Alliance—the ruling coalition) nominated Pranab Mukherjee and the largely self-styled candidate PA Sangma who was proposed by two regional parties initially and got nominated in the last minute by the NDA (National Democratic Alliance—the opposition of India), of course, with quite a few differences within it.

The Indian Presidential Election is not a direct poll with the people of the country voting while it is a direct election in the US. The system of Indian Presidential Poll is based on proportionate voting—the voters being the Members of both houses of Parliament (MP) and the Members of the Legislative Assemblies (MLA) and the Legislative councils of the states and union territories of the country. The value of the vote of An MLA is arrived at by dividing the total population of the state by the number of MLAs of that state multiplied by 1000. The vote value of an MP is arrived at by dividing the total of MLAs’ vote value by the number of MPs. Then both of the vote values are added to arrive at the grand total votes of the country. To get elected a Presidential candidate has to cross the halfway benchmark of total vote value.

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Article Author: Chinmay Chakravarty

A professional specialized in the creative field with over two decades of experience in journalistic writing, media co-ordination and editing of books & journals. Employed by Govt. of India presently working in Mumbai Doordarshan as a News Editor. }

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Article Tags

Indian Presidential Elections-2012, NDA, PA Sangma, Pranab Mukherjee, UPA-2,

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