How the President of India is elected?

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How the President of India is elected?

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ELECTION OF THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA

Article 52 states that there shall be a President of India. The executive powers of the Union shall be vested in the President. He, as the head of a state, symbolises the nation. In some democratic systems, the head of the state is also the head of the government and, therefore, he will also be the head of the political executive. The US Presidency represents this form. In Britain, the monarch is the symbolic head, representing the British nation. The powers of the Government are vested in the political office of the Prime Minister. In Indian Parliamentary democracy we have adopted the latter form. The President of India is the first citizen and represents the Indian nation and does not, therefore, belong to any particular political party. He is elected by the representatives of the people through an Electoral College.

Article 54 of the constitution says:

"The President shall be elected by the members of an electoral college consisting of -
(a) The elected members of both Houses of Parliament and
(b) The elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States (including National Capital Territory of Delhi and the Union Territory of Pondicherry vide the Constitution 70th amendment Act, 1992)."
Thus in the election of the President the citizens play no direct part and he is elected indirectly by the representatives or the people, like the American President but no special electoral college is elected, as in the case of America. Another point of difference that may be noted is that the election of the President of India is by the system of proportional representation, by the single transferable vote, as provided by Article 55(3) of the Constitution, while the American President is elected by the straight vote system.

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Preference For Indirect Election

The process of election of the President of India is original and no other Constitution contains a similar procedure. The question was considerably debated in the Constituent Assembly. It was argued by many members that the electoral college consisting of the elected members of Central Legislature as well as those of the Legislative Assemblies of the States was not sufficiently representative of Peoples' will. Some members, therefore, favoured the system of direct election by the people instead of an indirect round-about method, because such a system would be most democratic and it would make the President a direct choice of the nation. This was, however, not accepted. The main reasons which influenced the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly for determining indirect Presidential election are:

(1) Firstly, in a country following the Cabinet system of Government, the office of titular Chief Executive is a technical one, to the extent that its duties are largely prescribed by other authorities (usually by the Legislature), which requires specific competence for the performance of its duties from the incumbent. Very few voters can be competent to judge wisely of the technical abilities of the candidates for any particular office of this type, having specific, limited and defined functions.

(2) Secondly, if the direct election of the President were adopted, the Presidential candidate who has to carry on an election campaign from one corner of the country to another will certainly be put up by some party or the other, which may cause political excitement and generate party feelings. Thus the man elected to the Presidential office through this means will never be able to forget his party affiliations. So the ideal of getting a non-party man outside the turmoil of party passions and reasonably respected by all factions to assume the role of the head of the State will be defeated. Further, as India is almost a sub-continent with crores of enfranchised citizens, it would be impossible to provide an electoral machinery for the purpose of smooth and successful Presidential election.

(3) Lastly, a directly elected Chief Executive may not be content with his position of a mere constitutional head and can claim to derive his authority directly from the people. So, if he wanted to assume real power, it would lead to a constitutional deadlock and an inevitable clash with the Cabinet or real executive. This would definitely produce a confusion of responsibility.

Such a contingency had happened when under the French Constitution of 1848 the President of the French Republic, Louis Napoleon, was elected by the direct vote of the people, and by exploiting this system, he had overthrown the Republic to establish the empire with himself as emperor. To prevent the recurrence of such a contingency, the French people in their later constitutions discredited and abandoned the system of electing the head of State by the direct vote of the people.

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Middle Course

A middle course was chosen by the framers of the Indian Constitution in order to make the Presidential office more broad-based. The electoral college for Presidential election has been expanded so as to include the elected members of the State Assemblies all over India, which means that the President is chosen by the nation as a whole, indirectly, through the elected representatives of the people and is thus not the representative of a particular constituency but of the nation. Through this device he is also not necessarily to be a man of the majority party in Parliament. This has also the additional advantage of investing the President with greater moral independence and authority which would have not been possible, had he been a man virtually elected by the majority party in Parliament.

This indirect election of the President of India takes place with the participation of both directly elected members of Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies, and indirectly-elected members of Rajya Sabha. Each citizen of India is represented in Parliament and the State Legislative Assembly, because, the members of Lok Sabha and MLAs are elected on the basis of universal adult suffrage. The members nominated by the President have no right to vote in this election. Similarly, the members of the Legislative Councils of the State Legislatures, wherever they exist, have also been excluded from the electoral college.

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Some Pertinent Questions

The Presidential election is not free from difficulties. Election of the President can be held even if some seats in the Electoral College are vacant. Such election cannot be called in question on the ground of any vacancy existing for whatever reasons, among the members of the Electoral College electing a person either as President or Vice-President. Further, a President in office can change the composition of the Electoral College by dissolving one or more hostile Legislative Assemblies under Article 172(1) or 174(26) or under 356(1) of the Constitution of India.
Under such circumstances how can there by uniformity in the scale of representation? Is it under "as far as practicable?" Article 71(4), therefore, may be construed as repugnant to the purposes embodied in Article 55(4). Further, Article 55 is conspicuously silent on whether there will be representation of all or each State in the Presidential election, although there is vacancy in the electoral College. It only provides for "the different States." Since there is no guarantee to ensure non-vacancy in the Presidential Electoral College, the phrase, "the elected members of Legislative Assemblies of States" means only those who are actually in office at the time of Presidential Election.
The elected members of a suspended Assembly are entitled to take part in the Presidential election. For example, the MLAs of Rajasthan participated in the Presidential Election in 1967 though the Assembly was kept under suspended animation under Article 356(1) (c) of the Constitution.
So also the MLAs of Bihar had cast their votes in the Presidential Election of 1969. But holding of election at a time when the House of the People stands dissolved could be simply a dangerous practice. In view of these possible mischiefs, neither the Constitution nor the Eleventh Amendment provided for any remedy against creation of calculated or premeditated vacancies in the electoral college.
The framers of the Constitution have not provided against election of the President by a lame-duck Electoral College. It is generally expected that a newly-elected Electoral College will elect the President but the new Electoral College might not have come into existence when the Presidential Election is due or the term of the House of People is extended under Article 83(2) of the Constitution. If the term of the House is extended, the President may be elected by the lame-duck Electoral College. Under Article 56(1)(c), the President continues in office until his successor enters upon the office. It can neither be extended nor postponed under normal circumstances.
The Presidential election must be held before the expiration of his term of office. The Election Commission shall issue the notification on or as soon as conveniently may be, after, the sixtieth day before the expiration of the term of office of the out-going President or Vice-President, as the case may be. The election of the President must be completed within the time fixed by Article 62(1). Thus, the time limit is mandatory.
In case of death, resignation or removal by impeachment, the election of the President by the lame-duck Electoral College is imperative. There is scope for the exercise of discretion by the Election commission of India in favour of the party in power by completing the election by the lame-duck Electoral College within the prescribed period of sixty days. But there should be a categorical provision in the constitution prohibiting such Presidential election by the Electoral College.
However, the architects of the constitution intended an extensive electoral college as a necessary institutional prerequisite for their own conception of the office. The Presidential constituency is wider than the constituencies meant for electing the members of the Union Parliament. It also does not embrace the entire national electorate. Consequently, the incumbent does not remain responsible to the Union Parliament alone. Being indirectly elected, the President is not likely to develop political ambitions so as to provide alternate political leadership. The nature of composition of the Presidential Electoral College has made him the golden thread of Federal relationship. In the context of the recently-emerging federal trends of the Indian constitutional system and the radical changes in the political scene after 1967, the Presidential office is pregnant with possibilities of far-reaching consequences and even as the actual balancing-wheel of our federal polity.

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Procedure for the Election of the President

The Constitution provides for the election of the President by the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. The Constitution also provides for weighting of votes in the election of the President based on two fundamental principles. First, to secure as far as possible, uniformity in the scale of representation of different States of the Union, which emphasises the similarity in the status of the States of the Union. And secondly, to secure parity between the States as a whole and the Union in order to work up the idea of federal compact. For the purpose of securing such uniformity and parity the following method is laid down. this method makes the Presidential election complicated.
In order to secure uniformity in the scale of representation of the different States it is provided that every elected member of the Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) of a State has to cast as many votes as there are multiples of one thousand in the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the State by the total number of elected members of the Assembly, and if, after taking the said multiples of one thousand, the remainder is not less than five hundred, the votes of each member referred to above are further increased by one. To put it in simpler words, each member of the electoral college who is a member of a State Legislative Assembly will have a number of votes calculated as follows:

Total Population of the State
------------------------------------------------------------------------- Divided by 1000
Total number of elected members in the Legislative Assembly. Fractions exceeding one half being counted as one.
The following illustrations explain the method of calculation:
(i) "The population of Andhra Pradesh is 43,502,708. Let us take the total number of elected members in the Legislative Assembly of Andhra Pradesh to be 294. To obtain the number of votes which each such elected member will be entitled to cast at the election of the President we have first to divide 43,502,708 (which is the population) by 294 (which is the total number of elected members), and then to divide the quotient by 1,000. In this case the quotient is 147,968.3945. The number of votes which each such member will be entitled to cast would be 147,968.3945/1000 i.e. 148.
(ii) Again, the population of Punjab is 1,35,51,060. Let us take the total number of elected members of the Legislature of Punjab to be 117. Now applying the aforesaid process, if we divide 1,35,51,060 (i.e. the population) by 117 (i.e. the total number of elected members), the quotient is 115821.0256. Therefore, the number of votes which each member of the Punjab Legislature would be entitled to cast is 115,821.0256/1000 i.e. 116.
Each elected member of either House of Parliament shall have such number of votes as may be obtained by dividing the total number of votes assigned to the members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States under sub-clauses (a) and (b) by the total number of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament, fractions exceeding one-half being counted as one and other fractions being disregarded.

Total number of votes assigned to the elected members of the State Assemblies
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total number of elected members of both Houses of the Parliament
Fractions exceeding one-half being counted as one.
For the Presidential election, the population of a State is taken to be the population at the last preceding census.

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Proportional Representation

Article 55(3) of Indian Constitution requires that the President should be elected in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.
The underlying principle of proportional representation is to prevent the exclusion of minorities from the benefits of the State, and to give each minority group an effective share in the political life. The aim of proportional representation is to give every division of opinion among electors corresponding representation in national or local assemblies. In the ordinary mode of election known as "straight voting system", what happens is that a candidate getting the support of the numerically largest group is elected, although the combined strength of all other candidates representing different other parties may far out-number his supporters. The result is that the elected candidate cannot be said to represent the opinion of the majority of the electorate as a whole. The following illustrations will amply reveal this fact.
In Nandigram South (Midnapore) constituency of the West Bengal State, the following is the ledger of polling:

P.C. Jena (Congress) 15,320
Bhupal Panda (Communist Party) 14,926
I.C. Mahapatra (Jan Sangh) 5,204
K.L. Bera (KMPP) 3,184
38,634
It may be noticed that though 23,314 people voted against the Congress and only 15,320 in favour of it, yet the seat went to Congress.
This kind of anomaly is sought to be avoided by the system of Proportional Representation, and it is claimed that if this system is practised all the parties or shades of political opinion amongst the electorate will secure the number of seats in the elected body according to their respective strength amongst the electorate.

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How the Single Transferable Vote System Works

The best known form of Proportional Representation is that of the "Single Transferable Vote", which means that each elector has only one vote, irrespective of the number of seats to be filled up. For instance, if there are six seats to be filled up, the elector does not cast six votes but indicates six successive preferences, by marking his first preference and the succeeding preferences with the appropriate numerals against the name of candidates printed on his ballot paper.

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Quota of Votes

In the ordinary straight voting system a candidate who secures the highest number of votes is declared elected, while under the Proportional Representation system any member who secures the necessary quota of votes is declared elected. There are several ways of finding out the quota, but the most common method is to divide the total number of valid votes cast by the total number of seats in the constituency plus one and add one to the quotient. The formula may be represented as follows:

Total number of valid votes cast
Quota = ----------------------------------------------------------- +1
Total number of seats to be filled +1
Supposing there are 100 valid voting papers and four seats are to be filled up. In order, therefore, to determine the quota 100 is divided by 4 plus 1, i.e. 5 and the quotient arrived at, namely 20, is increased by one so that the quota is 21. After the quota is fixed, any candidate whose total number of first preference votes is equal to or exceeds the quota is forthwith declared elected.

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Distribution of Surplus Votes

Each successful candidate's surplus votes of first preferences which are now of no use to him, are transferred to other candidates proportionately to the second preferences indicated on the whole of his papers (except that the second preferences shown for any other candidate already elected are ignored and the third preferences on those papers taken instead). The point is that every vote shall be made effective and not allowed to go waste, while under the ordinary system of representation, the votes of many electors are of no use.