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Three days after Parliamentarians voted to choose India's 14th President, the country will know about their choice on Thursday. Whether Ram Nath Kovind or Meira Kumar will be India's next president has been already decided by 776 MPs and 4,120 MLAs who voted on Monday.
The elected President will take oath on July 25, the same day current president Pranab Mukherjee's term expires.
Who are the candidates?
Ram Nath Kovind, the former governnor of Bihar, is the ruling NDA's presidential candidate. Besides, he is also supported by some regional parties such as Tamil Nadu's AIADMK, Nitish Kumar-led JD(U), and Naveen Patnaik's BJD who are otherwise critics of the NDA.
According to NDA, it has the support of 44 parties and hence, expecting to garner roughly 70 percent of vote share.
Ram Nath Kovind is competing with former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar, the presidential candidate of the opposition Congress and its allies. She has gotten support from the Left front and Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD.
Even though, with the expected 70 percent vote share, Kovind is expected to win, cross-voting can yield unexpected results. Since the voting is anonymous, MPs and MLAs are able to not vote along their partly line.
On the voting day itself, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Praful Patel said that Kovind's win was inevitable. This was followed by speculations of cross-voting by politicians.
But NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik later dismissed the buzz about the party's MPs and MLAs voting for Kovind instead of Kumar.
The results will tell if the political leaders stuck to their party lines or voted with their own conscience which deviated from the party's decision.
The election process
The President is elected through indirect election whereas an electoral college consisting of representatives of people vote in secret ballot. The voters comprise the elected members of both the lower and upper houses of parliament, elected members of the Legislative assemblies of all states and Union Territories.
Insight 18 | How is President of India elected
According to reports, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Puducherry recorded a 100 percent voting.
The value of an MLA's vote is evaluated from the population of the state and the number of legislative assembly members elected from it. On the other hand, the value of an MP's vote stands invariably at 708.
The voting on Monday was held from 10 am to 5 pm. Ballot boxes from the states have been taken to Delhi and kept in the Parliament for counting.
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