Indian Presidential Elections-2012: Pranab Mukherjee New President!

The Republic of India has got a new President elected today, 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 19^th July and counting of votes was taken up from today.

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.

In the Indian Presidential Elections-2012 Pranab Mukherjee secured 7, 13,763 votes crossing the halfway mark of 5, 25,140 votes with quite a few members abstaining. PA Sangma could secure only 3, 15,987 votes. Messages of greeting poured in for Pranab and the Prime Minister, the Congress President and other dignitaries visited him at his residence. The defeated candidate PA Sangma congratulated Pranab too, but at the same time he announced his resolve to go to the court alleging bias and partisanship in the process of the Presidential Elections-2012.

After a lot of twists and turns, and bouts of acrimony in the race to the Presidential Elections, India has finally got a worthy personality for the top post. Congratulations to Pranab Mukherjee! He is the 13^th President of India to be elected and will be sworn in on July 25, 2012. The outgoing President Pratibha Patil is scheduled to deliver a farewell address to the nation on the evening of July 24.

Now it is over to the people of USA for electing their President.