The presidential elections in any country are a holy exercise to elect the first citizen of that country. It is also significant because it ensures that the honour of becoming the first citizen of your country is not a birthright but given to the most worthy personalities who have dedicated their lives for their country. In the Indian Presidential Elections, the general public does not vote directly for the president. Rather, the Members of Parliament (MPs) and State Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) vote on behalf of the people.

Before going into details, let us first understand the history of the office of the President of India. Before Independence, India was part of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Great Britain (and now the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) has always been a constitutional monarchy where a King or Queen is the head of the state. Also, the head appoints a Governor General, who is the representative of the King in each of the provinces governed by the King. Since India was a British territory, we also had a Governor General before independence. After independence, India decided to abolish the constitutional monarchies in an attempt to bring equality in society. India decided to adopt parliamentary democracy rather than presidential democracy. In parliamentary democracy, the Prime Minister (or person in equivalent position) is the head of the elected government but not the head of the state. All the official affairs of a sovereign state happen under the name of the head of the state and not the head of the government, just like in UK where the King or Queen runs the government and in turn the country. Hence, to fulfill this position of the Head of the State, India created the post of the President. There is an interesting observation made by Dr. Rajendra Prasad during the formation of constitution which is given in here [1].

Now this position should be a democratic one since we abolished monarchies to bring equality. So what could be the election process? India already has parliamentary democracy wherein people elect the parliament and the government, that control the legislature. The post of the president is a ceremonial post which means that the president does not have any power (This is mixture of the British monarchy and parliament and the American presidency). Hence, there is no point conducting a general election again for the post of president of India. This was also emphasized by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Their thoughts regarding the post of president have been given in [1]. This led to the development of process of election through Electoral College i.e. election by elected representatives of the people. Articles 52 to 62 of the Indian constitution govern the post of the President of India and its election process [2]. Furthermore, instead of governor generals appointed by the monarch for each province, we have a president appointed governor for each state who runs the state through an elected state government.

Let us understand what this process of election by Electoral College is. This process is also called an indirect process since the people don’t directly elect the president. The Electoral College comprises the elected representatives of the people, i.e. the Members of Lok Sabha and the Members of the State Legislative Assemblies. Since the Members of Rajya Sabha are elected by the state Legislative Assemblies, they are also part of the Electoral College. However, the nominated members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are not part of the Electoral College because they are nominated by the president. Members of the state Legislative Councils (MLCs) are also excluded from the process because they are not directly elected by the people. So, there are a total of 776 MPs (543 from Lok Sabha and 233 from Rajya Sabha) and 4120 MLAs from state legislative assemblies, (including the assemblies of Union Territories of Delhi and Puducherry). In effect, there are 4896 voters voting in the presidential election. An important condition under the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952 is that a candidate needs 50 of the electors (belonging to the Electoral College) to propose a candidate and another 50 to second his/her name to appear on the ballot, otherwise the candidacy is deemed invalid. Political parties cannot issue whips to garner votes for a particular candidate and it is expected that the elected representatives will vote according to the general opinion in their constituencies (Although this doesn’t happen in reality!).

The vote of each person of the Electoral College has certain value. The value of vote of an MLA is different for each state and is calculated by the following formula:

Value of vote of an MLA = Total population of state / (Number of MLAs x 1000)

The population is taken from the 1971 census. A brief discussion, government perspective and reasoning for taking the 1971 data is given in [3] and [4].

Let us understand the above formula through an example.

  • In 1971, the population of Maharashtra was 5,04,12,235.
  • The number of MLAs in Maharashtra state assembly are 288.
  • This number is multiplied by 1000 so we get 2,88,000.
  • This is divided from total population and we get 5,04,12,235/2,88,000 = 175.042.
  • The value of vote of each MLA from Maharashtra is 175.

Similarly calculating for all the states, the value of vote is maximum of 208 for MLAs from Uttar Pradesh while it is minimum of 7 for MLAs of Sikkim. In total, the value of votes of all the MLAs of all the states adds up to 5,49,495. This makes up one-half of total Electoral College vote.

All the MPs have equal value of vote which is decided by the following formula:

Value of vote of an MP = Total value of votes of all the MLAs / Total number of MPs.

  • In the above case, value of vote of an MP = 5,49,495 / 776.
  • Taking floor value of answer gives value of vote of an MP = 708.
  • Now, 776 x 708 = 5,49,408.

This makes up the other half of the Electoral College vote.

Combining both halves i.e. the votes of MLAs and the votes of MPs, the total value of all the votes comes out to be 10,98,903. To get elected, a candidate must receive 50%+1 votes in the election. The elections are carried such that the voters are required to give preferences to the candidates in their ballot paper. So, if there are more than two candidates and if no-one crosses the halfway mark, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and the 2nd preference votes of that candidate are given to the remaining candidates. This process goes on until one of the candidates crosses the halfway mark.

The process described above also applies to the vice presidential elections which are conducted separately from the presidential elections. I hope that this has given you a brief idea about why and how the presidential election process in India is different. Please read the following references to gain deeper understanding of the whole process.

References:
[1] http://indianexpress.com/article/research/pranab-mukherjee-ram-nath-kovind-did-you-know-the-post-of-indian-president-finds-its-inspiration-in-the-british-monarchy-4765104/
[2] http://www.clearias.com/president-of-india/
[3] https://factly.in/what-explains-the-obsession-with-the-1971-census/
[4] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-population-based-on-1971-census-still-used-instead-of-current-population-for-calculating-the-value-of-the-vote-of-a-Member-of-Legislative-Assembly

Other important references:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/how-is-the-president-of-india-elected-pranab-mukherjee-4675979/
http://www.hindustantimes.com/interactives/how-india-president-elected-explainer/
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/how-india-elects-its-president/1/991893.html
http://pib.nic.in/archieve/others/pr.html