Presidential Election 2022: Voting begins, PM casts vote | 10 updates
The counting of votes will be held on July 21, and the new President will take the oath of office on July 25.
FollowVoting is underway to elect India's 15th President on Monday, July 18, with the NDA's Droupadi Murmu facing off against the opposition's Yashwant Sinha. However, with parties declaring support for Murmu, the contest is considered all but over.
Updates:
1) Prime Minister Narendra Modi cast his vote using the special pen. The election is being held on the first day of the monsoon session of Parliament. Before the 2017 presidential elections, Droupadi Murmu (64) was a strong contender for the position; nevertheless, the government ultimately decided to nominate Dalit and Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind.
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2) The NDA's selection of Murmu, a tribal woman from Odisha and a former governor of Jharkhand, is considered a planned decision that won over both Naveen Patnaik of Odisha and the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
3) Soon after her candidacy was announced, the BJD (which has 31,686 of 1086431 votes in the electoral college), the YSRCP (45,550 votes), and the AIADMK (14,940 votes) all announced their support for her, making it easy for Murmu to beat Sinha.
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4) Murmu has also received assurances of support from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is rarely on the same page as ally BJP these days.
5) Shiv Sena's Thackeray and Shinde factions, despite the fall of the Maharashtra government and disagreements with the BJP, have stated that they will support Murmu.
6) Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), a Congress ally, became the latest non-NDA ally to declare its support for Murmu in the 2022 presidential elections last week.
7) After three proposed candidates declined, the opposition settled on Sinha, a former Union Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government who later joined the Trinamool Congress.
8) Sharad Pawar, the chief of the Nationalist Congress Party, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, the former governor, and Farooq Abdullah, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, all declined, claiming various reasons.
9) The members of the Electoral College, which includes elected members of both houses of Parliament and legislative assemblies from all states, and the National Capital Territory of Delhi and the Union Territory of Puducherry, elect the President.
10) There will be no party whip for voting, and MPs and MLAs will be free to vote however they see fit. According to the Election Commission's schedule, the counting votes will take place on July 21, and the new President will take the oath of office on July 25.
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