After winning in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the Bharatiya Janata Party now gets an option to select to their own choice member as the President of India. Taking the support of AIADMK, BJP and BDJ the party can choose their candidate as they are now closer to the electoral college’s required number. The present President Pranab Mukherjee retires in July after which the party can appoint their own candidate for the post. The big question now is, ‘Will BJP elect L.K. Advani as the President of India?’
The party has not yet taken any decision, but it has been reported that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proposed the senior leader of the party Advani’s name for this post. The meeting of the NDA party at which the BJP president Amit Shah was present, the PM is said to have proposed Advani’s name.
It is, however, unclear as to what the party’s final decision will be. It is said that many names have been doing the rounds, but the name repeated many times is supposedly L.K. Advani. The final decision will be taken in June as the presidential election gets closer. With big wins to their credit, BJP and allies have 5.32 lakh vote majority in the electoral process. This is just 17500 short of the half way mark. The vote would go up to 6,28,195 is BJP becomes successful in gaining the support of AIADMK and BJD. The required vote for electing the President is 5,49,442.
There is total of 4,896 legislators in the electoral college, this is including 776 Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members and also 4,120 MLAs. The MLCs and nominated members are not eligible to vote in this process. The total value for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha is 708 votes and the value of the vote for MLA depends upon the population of the state. The highest value of state for MLA is 209, which is now BJP ruled and the lowest is 7 in the state of Sikkim.
Though BJP needs 17,488 votes it would also depend on AIADMK and BJD. AIADMK has 134 MLAs whose vote value 23,584 and the 50 MPs of AIADMK have a vote value of 35,400. For BJD it is 17,433 and 28 MLAs have a vote value of 19,824. All this, when included BJP will be able to select the president of the country.
