As vote counting on, Murmu set to be Prez
NEW DELHI: Droupadi Murmu, the National Democratic Alliance candidate for the presidential elections, inched towards victory on Thursday evening after two rounds of counting of votes.
The results will declare who will succeed incumbent Ram Nath Kovind to become the country’s 15th President. The voting for the election took place on July 18 and was completed in a peaceful manner.
The new President will be sworn in on July 25 in the central hall of Parliament.
Murmu, set to be the first President from the Scheduled Tribe community, was close to crossing the 50%-mark with her vote value at 483,299, while that of her rival, the Oppositionbacked Yashwant Sinha’s vote value was at 189,876 after two rounds of counting.
The ruling NDA that has numbers stacked on its side was buoyant about Murmu’s imminent win. “We are very confireturning dent that she will have a wider margin than President Kovind who had won about 65% of the total votes in 2017. It will not be a surprise if she bags around 70% of the total votes,” a senior Bharatiya Janata Party functionary said.
After the first round of counting, when votes of all members of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were counted, Murmu was leading with 540 of the 748 votes polled. With each MP having a vote value of 700 in this presidential election, Murmu had a total vote value of 523,600 which is 72.19% of the total valid vote count of MPs polled.
Sinha had received 208 votes of MPs after the first round of counting, with a total vote value of 145,600, which is 27.81% of the total valid votes polled, officer PC Mody said.
The votes of 15 MPs were declared invalid, Mody said, adding that all the votes of MPs have been counted. Eight MPs did not vote in the presidential election.
“Droupadi Murmu has secured 540 votes with a value of 378,000 and Yashwant Sinha has secured 208 votes with a value of 145,600. A total of 15 votes were invalid. These are figures for Parliament (votes)…,” said Mody.
Going by the strength of the parties which officially extended support to Murmu, the NDA candidate is estimated to have got votes of five to six more MPs. As many as 538 MPs of various parties had extended their support to Murmu ahead of the election, but a few of them did not vote.
In the second round of voting, Murmu received the votes of 809 MLAs out of a total of 1,138 MLAs in 10 states, with a vote count of 105,299, while Sinha received the votes of 329 MLAs with vote count of 44,276.
Among the states where votes were counted included Andhra Pradesh, where Murmu received almost all the votes, along with Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisharh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, some senior members of his Cabinet and Bharatiya Janata Party chief JP Nadda were likely to meet Murmu on Thursday evening following her expected victory.
According to people aware of the matter, home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi and Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal were also scheduled to meet Murmu to congratulate her.
People aware of the matter said Nadda is also likely hold a meeting of BJP leaders, including its chief ministers from different states, on Sunday ahead of Murmu’s expected oath-taking ceremony on July 25.
Meanwhile, celebrations began at SLS (Shyam, Laxman and Sipun) Memorial Residential School at Pahadpur in Odisha, which was founded by Murmu in memory of her husband and two sons after their demise.
According to functionaries aware of the details, the Chief Justice of India will administer the oath to the new President. After the oath ceremony, the new President will accompany the outgoing President Ramnath Kovind to his new official residence at 12, Janpath in the national Capital.