Presidential election 2022: NDA's Droupadi Murmu leads after 2nd round of counting, formal announcement soon

India is about to find out who will follow incumbent Ram Nath Kovind as the country's 15th President, as the presidential election ballots are being counted at Parliament House and the announcement is due soon.

NDA's Presidential candidate, Droupadi Murmu, is leading after the second round of counting. After the second round counting, PC Mody spoke to the media and said, "Ballot paper of first 10 states alphabetically counted - total valid votes 1138 and their total value 1,49,575. Out of this, Droupadi Murmu gets 809 votes valued at 1,05,299 and Yashwant Sinha gets 329 votes valued at 44,276."

He further said the grand total so far is 1,886 valid votes valued at 6,73,175 out of which Droupadi Murmu gets 1,349 votes valued at 4,83,299. "Yashwant Sinha gets 537 votes, valued at 1,89,876 so far," he added.

The counting of votes began at Parliament House around at around 1.30 pm.  The process started at 11 am, with ballot boxes from all states being opened before the count began.

Updates:

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi is anticipated to visit Murmu at her temporary residence in Teen Murti Marg and congratulate her after the election results, as per sources.
• The Delhi BJP plans a roadshow from the party headquarters to Rajpath after Murmu's victory. According to sources, many senior leaders will attend the event.
• The BJP's state units have also planned victory parades, which will occur once the results are released. 
• Murmu's hometown of Rairangpur in Odisha is also getting ready to celebrate with 20,000 sweets. A tribal dance and victory procession are also on the agenda.
• NDA's selection of Murmu, an Odisha tribal woman and former Jharkhand Governor, is seen as a calculated move to split the opposition and gain support from non-aligned parties such as Naveen Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal and Jaganmohan Reddy's YSR Congress.
• 34 parties backed the opposition candidate, former Union minister Yashwant Sinha, and 44 backed Droupadi Murmu, former Governor of Jharkhand. However, several MLAs have admitted to cross-voting in favour of Murmu.
• The counting of votes will be preceded by sorting and separating the votes of MPs and MLAs. The value of each MP's vote is fixed at 700, whereas the value of MLAs' votes varies by state.
• The winner of the Presidential election is determined not by who receives the most votes but by who receives more votes than a certain quota. The quota is calculated by adding the votes cast for each candidate, dividing the total by two, and adding '1' to the result. The winner is the candidate who receives more votes than this value.