Parliamentarians and legislators across the country voted on Monday to elect the next President and by the time voting concluded, there were enough indications that NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu was set for an emphatic win against the Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
According to the Election Commission, over 99% of the total electors cast their ballot. Returning Officer PC Mody said voting in Delhi had 98.90% of the electors permitted to vote in Parliament House exercising their franchise. Votes will be counted on July 21 and the next President will take oath on July 25. Mody told reporters that 736 electors — 727 MPs and nine MLAs — had been permitted by the Election Commission to vote at Parliament House.
Sources said eight MPs — two each from the BJP, Shiv Sena and BSP and one each from the Congress and AIMIM — did not vote.Instances of cross-voting, mostly in favour of Murmu, were reported from many states including her home state Odisha, Jharkhand where she was governor, Gujarat and Haryana. How many MPs and MLAs cross-voted will be known when the votes are counted.
In Room No. 63 of Parliament House, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his predecessor Manmohan Singh, who came in a wheelchair, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, senior ministers, leaders of parties and MPs voted. SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav too came in a wheelchair while finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and power minister RK Singh came wearing PPE kits.