Guwahati: Counting for the recently-held Presidential election began in the Parliament building Thursday and the result is expected to be announced around 4 pm.
After the first round of counting in which the votes of the MPs from both the houses were counted, National Democratic Alliance’s Presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu bagged 540 votes of the 748 and the value of her votes is 5,23,600, announced Rajya Sabha Secretary-General P C Mody, who is the returning officer. Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha, meanwhile, secured 208 votes with a value of 1,45,600. There were 15 votes that were invalid among the MPs’ votes, Mody said.
Leaders from the ruling BJP said that due to the cross voting in many states Murmu would get around 70 per cent of the total votes in the electoral college, which comes to over 10 lakh.
Once the result is announced, the Election Commission officials will meet the winning candidate to give the election certificate. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP national president J P Nadda, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, along with the leaders of both the Houses, are expected to visit the new President.
The swearing-in ceremony of the 15th President will take place at the central hall of the Parliament on July 25 by the Chief Justice of India. Once sworn in, the new President will first go to Rashtrapati Bhavan, and after completing the formalities, will accompany the outgoing President Ramnath Kovind to his new residence on Janpath Road the same day.
The BJP has 303 MPs in the Lok Sabha apart from the 33 MPs from their allies. In the Rajya Sabha the BJP has a strength of 91 MPs and the alliance partners have 33 members. But four of the BJP MPs could not cast their votes.
“Still we will have a record votes in favour of Murmuji. We are expected to score around 70 per cent of the total votes,” a top leader of the party said Thursday afternoon.
