President, next

Sumitra Mahajan, M.M. Joshi, Venkaiah Naidu, Draupadi Murmu and T.C. Gehlot are the hot favourites

- Pratul Sharma

The results of the assembly elections in five states will arrive on March 11. And they will initiate hectic parleys and calculations to choose India’s 14th president. To send its nominee to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the BJP needs to score a comprehensive victory in Uttar Pradesh, and do well in other states.

By zeroing in on a retirement home for President Pranab Mukherjee, whose tenure gets over in July, the government has signalled that it is keen on sending someone from its own ideological family to occupy the top constitutional office. Mukherjee won the election in July 2012 by getting 7,13,763 votes, more than double the number his rival, former Lok Sabha speaker P.A. Sangma, polled.

“Things will be clear after the [assembly poll] results in five states, especially Uttar Pradesh,” a Union minister told THE WEEK. According to the minister, it was too early to predict the outcome of the presidential election, as the BJP is still more than 70,000 votes short of majority.

The president is chosen by an electoral college of MPs and legislators in states. The election is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation, in which population figures and the number of assembly seats of states play a role in determining the value of each vote of the electoral college (see graphics). In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, 403 MLAs have a combined 83,824 votes.

“After the results are declared, the people of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Goa would have spoken and given a clear mandate to the BJP,” said Meenakshi Lekhi, MP and BJP spokesperson. “The party is confident of getting its candidate elected as the next president.”