 "Droupadi Murmu")
With the support of regional parties like the BJD, the YSR-CP, the BSP, the AIADMK, the TDP, the JD(S), the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Shiv Sena and now the JMM, NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu's vote share in the July 18 presidential poll is likely to reach nearly two-thirds and she is set to become the first woman from the tribal community to occupy the top constitutional post.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) announced its support on Thursday in favour of Murmu, who is a former governor of Jharkhand.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) nominee now has over 6.67 lakh votes after the support of various regional outfits, out of a total of 10,86,431 votes.
These include 3.08 lakh votes of the MPs of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has around 32,000 votes in the electorate, which is around 2.9 per cent of the total votes.
The ruling party in Odisha has 114 MLAs in the 147-member state Assembly, while the BJP has 22 lawmakers. The BJD has 12 MPs in the Lok Sabha and nine in the Rajya Sabha.
Murmu has also received the support of the AIADMK (17,200 votes), the YSRCP (with around 44,000 votes), the Telugu Desam Party (around 6,500 votes), the Shiv Sena (25,000 votes) and the Janata Dal (Secular) (around 5,600 votes).
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The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) strength in the Upper House of Parliament is 92 after the results of the just-concluded Rajya Sabha elections. It has a total of 301 MPs of its own in the Lok Sabha.
The saffron party's empathic win in four state Assembly polls, including in Uttar Pradesh, where the value of the vote of each MLA is more than their counterparts in any other state, has only added to its overall advantage.
Though the BJP and its allies in the NDA have fewer MLAs than they had during the 2017 presidential poll, their numbers of MPs have gone up since.
The saffron party had sprung a surprise by picking tribal leader Murmu to succeed Ram Nath Kovind, a leader from the Dalit community, for the president's post.
After being elected, Murmu will be the first president who was born post-independence.
According to the latest official figures, the BJP on its own has 393 MPs, excluding four nominated Rajya Sabha members who cannot vote, of the current strength of 776 members in both houses of Parliament, giving it a clear majority.
The BJP's numerical advantage in Parliament, which has almost half of the votes in the electoral college that also comprises all the MLAs, is further enhanced when the strength of its allies like the Janata Dal (United), which has 21 MPs, the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party, the Apna Dal and several from the northeastern states is added.
While there are 776 MPs in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, each having 700 votes, there are as many as 4,033 legislators in the states with a different vote value who will also elect Kovind's successor.
Though the final list of electors will be notified after the bypolls to three Lok Sabha seats and the Rajya Sabha elections to 16 seats, the NDA has 440 MPs in its favour, while the opposition UPA has around 180 MPs, besides 36 MPs of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) who are expected to support the opposition candidate.
Among the states, the BJP has a maximum of 56,784 votes from Uttar Pradesh, where it has 273 MLAs. Each MLA in Uttar Pradesh has 208 votes. The NDA will get its second-highest number of votes among the states from Bihar, where with 127 MLAs, it will get 21,971 votes as each legislator has 173 votes, followed by 18,375 votes from Maharashtra where it has 105 MLAs and each of them has 175 votes.
With 131 MLAs, the NDA will get 17,161 votes from Madhya Pradesh, 16,464 votes of its 112 MLAs from Gujarat and 15,982 votes of its 122 legislators in Karnataka.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA), on the other hand, has a little over 1.5 lakh votes of its MPs and will get around the same number of votes from its legislators from the states.
The value of the vote of a Member of Parliament has gone down to 700 from 708 in the presidential poll this time due to the absence of a legislative assembly in Jammu and Kashmir.
The value of the vote of an MP in a presidential election is based on the number of elected members in the legislative assemblies of the states and Union territories, including Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir.
The election will be held on July 18 and the results will be announced on July 21.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
