Explained: Significance of recent assembly elections on presidential polls

President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (File)

Despite the Bhartiya Janata Party bagging four out of five states in just-concluded assembly elections, the results have sent the ruling party and its allies into a tizzy as the number of seats won are very critical for the ruling NDA's calculation for the presidential elections scheduled to be held by July this year.

Considering its overall strength in the state assemblies and the Parliament, the recent numbers suggest that it won't be a smooth sail for the NDA to choose the successor of President Ram Nath Kovind whose term ends on July 24.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee too said on Wednesday that despite its recent victory in four states elections, winning the upcoming presidential polls will not be easy for the BJP as it doesn’t have even half the total number of legislators across the country.

“The game is not yet over. The presidential elections will take place soon. Without our support, you (BJP) won’t sail through. You shouldn’t forget that,” Banerjee said during her speech in the state assembly  

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In 2017, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Kovind, then Bihar governor, had defeated opposition candidate and former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar by bagging nearly two-thirds of the votes.

Here is how the recently-concluded assembly elections in five states are critical for the ruling NDA’s calculations for the elections:

The process

The President of India is elected by an electoral college, which consists of all the 543 Lok Sabha MPs, 233 Rajya Sabha MPs, and 4,120 MLAs from across the country.

The electoral college has a total of 10,98,903 votes.

The value of vote of each elector (MP/MLA) is predetermined. For each member of Parliament (MP), the value of the vote is fixed at 708. For a member of the legislative assembly (MLA), however, the value of the vote is determined by a formula involving the population (based on the 1971 Census) of the state he/she represents and thus it differs from state to state.

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Each MLA from Uttar Pradesh, for example, the largest and most populous state, thus carries the highest value among all states, 208. The 403 Uttar Pradesh MLAs together have a total value of 83,824. The 80 MPs from the state have a total vote value of 56,640 taking the overall value of votes of MPs and MLAs from Uttar Pradesh to 1.4 lakh, giving them nearly 12.7 percent weightage.

Among other states where elections were held recently, the vote value for an MLA is 118 for Punjab, 64 for Uttarakhand, 20 for Goa and 18 for Manipur. Thus the total value of Punjab is 13,572, Uttarakhand 4,480, Goa 800 and Manipur 1,080.

After the nominations are filed, the MLAs, in their respective state and Union territory, and MPs, in Parliament, are given ballot papers (green for MPs and pink for MLAs) to cast their vote.

The winner of the presidential election is not the person who gets the most votes but the person who gets more votes above a certain quota. So after calculating the total value of votes polled by each candidate, the returning officer adds up the value of all valid votes polled. The quota is determined by dividing the sum of valid votes by 2 and adding one to the quotient.

For example, if the total value of valid votes polled by all candidates is 1,00,001. The quota required for getting elected will be arrived at dividing 1,00,001 by 2  and adding 1 to the quotient = 50,000.50+1 (.50 called the remainder is ignored). Thus the quota will be 50,000+1 = 50,001.

In case no one gets more votes than the quota, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated.

 Not a smooth sail for the BJP?

The BJP won in four out of five states that went to the polls in the last two months, yet it may still not have numbers to have the NDA candidate as the next President of India.

Also, read | BJP's victory in four states not reflection of popular mandate: Mamata Banerjee

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu is a frontrunner for the top post but the BJP leadership has yet to take a call on whether or not incumbent Kovind should be offered a second term, according to a report by NDTV.  So far, only the first president Rajendra Prasad has been elected twice.

The NDA is at least 1.2 percentage points away from the 50 percent vote share it requires for its candidate to win the presidential poll, according to a report in the Print. This fall in the NDA vote share is because the BJP’s numbers have fallen in the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand assemblies compared to what it had after the 2017 state polls.

In Uttar Pradesh, for example, the BJP had won 312 seats and its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) had won 11. Even before the 2022 polls, the alliance’s strength had fallen to 315 in the state due to vacancies. In the latest polls, the numbers fell further. The BJP won 255 while the Apna Dal (S) won 12. This along with six MLAs from BJP ally Nishad Party takes the NDA count to 273 seats.

In Uttarakhand, too, the BJP’s seat count came down from 56 to 47. In Manipur, since the NDA MLAs have been reduced to 32 from 36, a lot will depend on the allies in the state who contested the 2022 elections separately.

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In Goa, the NDA strength has come down from 28 MLAs to 20. The BJP had outside support from its old ally, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, which has two MLAs. In Punjab, there was no change in the BJP’s tally of two seats.

Allies and friends

Regional parties are also key. Prominent among these are Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), K Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) and Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD).

The TMC, AAP and TRS, the ‘unfriendly’ allies, are unlikely to support the NDA candidate. Under these circumstances, BJP will bank on the YSRCP and BJD to secure a majority in the college. YSRCP has 4 percent and BJD has about 3 percent share in the electoral college