Kicking off the presidential electoral exercise, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced on Thursday, 9 June, that the polling for the presidential election will be held on 18 July.
The counting of votes will be conducted on 21 July.
In a docket of announcements on Thursday, the EC also laid down the guidelines underlining the prerequisite for being a presidential candidate.
Conditions for Valid Nomination
The EC stated that anyone desiring to contest would need the sign of 50 electors as proposers and 50 others as seconders on their nomination papers – a move aimed at removing non-serious candidates.
The seventh presidential poll had seen 36 out of 37 nominations getting rejected, carrying on a trend where many people contested the polls without having a sliver of chance at getting elected.
Other conditions include:
The candidate will also need to deposit an amount of Rs 15,000 as security – in case of non-election, the security deposit will be forfeited if the number of valid votes polled by him or her is less than one-sixth of the number of votes necessary to secure return of a candidate at such election. In other cases, the deposit will be returned.
Further, a person will not be deemed to hold any office of profit by reason only that he or she is the president or vice-president of the Union or the governor of any state or is a minister in the central or any state government.
A candidate can only file a maximum of four nomination papers, and have a maximum a four papers filed for them.
Who Are the Electors?
The upcoming elections will have 4,809 electors, comprising 4,033 members of legislative assemblies and 776 members of parliament.
Of the MPs, 233 are Rajya Sabha members and 543 are from the Lok Sabha.
Further, no elector can subscribe, whether as proposer or as seconder, more than one nomination paper in an election.
In case of a violation, the elector's signature will be invalidated on all nomination papers except the first one that is delivered.
How to Challenge the Election to the Presidential Post
As per the EC, an election petition calling in question an election to the office of the President may be presented within 30 days from the date of the declaration of the result to the Supreme Court by any candidate, or any 20 or more electors joined together as petitioners.
How Have Candidates Fared in the Past
In the first presidential election, which was held in 1952, there were five contesting candidates with the last one getting only 533 votes.
The second election, which witnessed the election of Rajendra Prasad for a second time, had three contesting candidates.
As many as 17 contestants ran for the post of President in the fourth election in 1967, however, 9 of the candidates received zero votes, and five garnered less than 1,000 votes.
The fifth election had 15 contestants with five failing to secure even a single vote.
(With inputs from PTI.)
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