15^th PRESIDENT OF INDIA

Droupadi Murmu won the 2022 Presidential election after defeating the joint Opposition nominee Yashwant Sinha. She will take oath as the 15th President of India on July 25.

She is the first Adivasi and second woman to become the nation’s First Citizen and the Supreme Commander of India’s Armed Forces.

About Droupadi Murmur

• She is born into a Santhal family in 1958. She was the first girl in Uparbeda, (one of the seven revenue villages in Uparbeda panchayat) in Odisha’s backward Mayurbhanj district, to go to college at the Ramadevi Women’s University in Bhubaneswar.
• She was elected twice in the Odisha Assembly and served as a Minister from 2000 to 2004, in Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s BJD-BJP lead coalition government.
• She also served as a vice-president of the BJP’s Scheduled Tribes Morcha.

Governor of Jharkhand

Murmu was sworn in as the first woman Governor of Jharkhand in 2015.

How is the President elected in India?

• The President of India is elected through an electoral college system, where the votes are given by national and state lawmakers.
• Elections are conducted and overseen by the Election Commission of India.
• The President's electoral college is made up of all the elected members of the upper and lower house of Parliament, and also the elected member of the legislative assemblies of the state and union territories.

The procedure of the election

• Before the voting, there is a nomination stage, where the candidate intending to stand in the election, files the nomination along with the signed list of 50 proposers and the 50 seconders.
• These proposers and the seconders can be anyone among the total members of the electoral college from the state and the national level.
• An elector cannot propose or second the nomination of more than one candidate.

Article related to the President

• Article 54: It talks about the election of the President.
• Article 55: The manner of election of the President.
• Article 56: Term of office of the President.
• Article 57: Eligibility for re-election.
• Article 58: Qualification required for the election of the President.

Value of vote and vote calculation

• Vote cast by each MP or MLA is not calculated as one vote and doesn’t have the same value.
• The fixed value of each vote by an MP of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha is 700.
• The total value of each vote of MLA differs from state to state based on a calculation that factors in its population vis-à-vis the number of members in its legislative assembly.
• Currently, the population of the state is taken from the figure of the 1971 census and this will change when the figure of the census taken after the year 2026 is republished.
• Value of each MLA vote is determined by dividing the population of the state by the number of MLA in the legislative assembly and the quotient achieved is further divided by 1000
• Uttar Pradesh has the highest vote value for each of its MLA which is 208 and the value of one MLA vote in Maharashtra is 175.

What is required to secure a victory?

• A nominated candidate secures the victory through a system of bagging a specific quota of votes. While counting the Election Commission total up all the valid votes cast by the electoral college through paper ballots and to win, the candidate must secure 50% of the total votes cast +1.
• The voters of the electoral college write the names of the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of preference.
• The presidential election is held by the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote and the voting is by secret ballot.

Who does not take part in the Presidential election?

• Nominated Members of the Rajya Sabha (12)
• Nominated Members of the State Legislative Assemblies
• Members of Legislative Councils (Both elected and nominated) in bicameral legislatures
• Nominated Members of the union territories of Delhi and Puducherry

What is the qualification of the President’s office?

• He should be an Indian Citizen.
• His age should be a minimum of 35 years.
• He should qualify the conditions to be an elected member of the Lok Sabha.
• He should not hold any office of profit under the central government, state government, or any public authority.

Can the Indian president be impeached?

• Article 61 say that the President can be removed from his office before the expiry of his term only on the grounds of a violation of the Constitution.
• However, the Constitution does not clearly define the meaning of the ‘violation of the Constitution.
• The impeachment process can be started from any house of the parliament by leveling charges against the President.
• The notice bearing the charges against the President must be signed by at least a quarter of the members of the house.
• The resolution to impeach the president must be passed by a special majority which is two-thirds in the originating house.
• Next it is sent to the other house for consideration. The other house acts as the investigating house. A select committee is formed to investigate the charges which are labeled against the President.

During the process, the President of India has the right to defend himself through authorized counsel. He can choose to defend himself or appoint any person or the lawyer or any Attorney General of India to do so.