India to get its 15th President today

New Delhi: The counting of votes to elect India’s 15th President will take place on Thursday. The counting began at Parliament House at 11 am.

The voting took place on July 18 and was completed in a peaceful manner.

The contest is between BJP-led NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu and opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha. The NDA candidate is seen to have a clear edge in the contest.

The voting ended at 5 pm at the Parliament House and at designated places in the capitals of all states besides the UTs of Puducherry and Delhi on Monday.

Of the 736 electors comprising 727 MPs and nine MLAs who were permitted by the Election Commission to vote at Parliament House, 728 electors cast their vote. This includes 719 MPs and nine MLAs. The total turnout at Parliament House was 98.91 per cent.

Arrangements were made to bring back the polled ballot boxes from states to Parliament House by July 19.

Counting

The counting will take place in Room No 63 in Parliament House and the result will be declared immediately after the counting. The immediate precincts of Room Number 63 have been declared as sanitised and “silent zone”.

Only counting officers, officials deployed to assist the Rajya Sabha Secretary General, candidates and one authorised representative of each candidate, observers appointed by the Election Commission and media persons with valid passes will be allowed entry into the counting hall. Rajya Sabha Secretary General PC Mody is the returning officer for the Presidential election.

Droupadi Murmu

Murmu has previously served as the Jharkhand Governor for six years. She was sworn in as the Governor of the state on May 18, 2015 and served it for 6 years and 48 days. However, in July 2021 she left for her native city Rairangpur (Odisha) after completing her term as the Governor of Jharkhand.

Exactly a year later, the ruling NDA alliance nominated her for the country’s highest constitutional post.

Born on June 20, 1958 in Odisha to a simple Santhal tribal family, she started her political career in 1997 being elected as the Councillor of the district board in Rairangpur, Odisha.

Prior to joining politics, she had worked as an honorary assistant teacher at Sri Aurobindo Integral Education and Research, Rairangpur, and as a junior assistant in Odisha Irrigation Department before joining politics.

Murmu was elected twice as an MLA in Odisha and also got a chance to work as a Minister in the Naveen Patnaik government when the BJD-BJP coalition government was in power.

She was also awarded the Neelkanth Award for the best legislator by the Odisha Legislative Assembly.

Yashwant Sinha

Yashwant Sinha started his political career in 1984 after taking voluntary retirement as an IAS officer.

He was fielded as a Janata Party candidate from the Hazaribagh parliamentary constituency in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections, but faced a huge electoral defeat. Later in 1988, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha and served as the Union Finance Minister during the Chandrashekhar-led government at the Centre.

In 1995, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and was fielded as the party candidate from the Ranchi Assembly constituency. Thereafter, he became a member of the Bihar Assembly.

Later, Sinha was also elected as the Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly.

However, only after a year and a half, the BJP decided to nominate him to the Upper House of Parliament.

Later, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Hazaribagh constituency in 1998, 1999 and 2009. He also served as a Cabinet Minister during the then Vajpayee government at the Centre.