How is the President of India elected?

NDA’s presidential nominee Draupadi Murmu met Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday. If elected, 64-year-old Murmu will become the first tribal President of the country. And the second woman president after Pratibha Patil.

President Ram Nath Kovind’s tenure is coming to an end on July 25. And an election to fill his post will be held before that, on July 18. And we will know the name of the new President on July 21 if an election takes place at all.

So how is the President of India chosen? Unlike that of MLAs and MPs, it is not a direct election. The President is elected by an electoral college. And who all are the members of this electoral college? They are from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Legislative Assemblies of the states and Legislative Assemblies of the Union Territories of Delhi and Puducherry. Nominated members to Rajya Sabha and state legislative councils are not part of the electoral college.

The votes of electoral college members have a certain larger value. For instance, each MP’s vote carries a value of 700.  In the case of MLAs, the value of vote is calculated based on the population of each state and the value differs from one state to another. In highly populated states like Uttar Pradesh, an MLA carries a vote value of 208, while less populated states like Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the value of vote for an MLA is 8.

According to the Article 55(2) of the Constitution, every elected member of the Legislative Assembly of a State shall have as many votes as there are multiples of one thousand in the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the State by the total number of the elected members of the Assembly. To win the Presidential election, the candidate has to bag over 50% of the votes.

The Presidential candidate filing for the nomination has to secure signed approvals from 50 proposers and 50 seconders. The proposers and seconders could be members from the electoral college.