In 2022 an Electoral College of 4,809 Elected MPs and MLAs Chose India's President, With Votes Weighted From 7 for a Sikkim MLA to 700 for Each MP

In the 2022 election for the President of India, 4,809 elected members of Parliament and the state legislatures were eligible to vote, and their votes were not worth the same. Each MP’s vote was worth 700, each Uttar Pradesh legislator’s 208 and each Sikkim legislator’s 7, for a combined 1,086,431. The winning candidate polled 676,803 of the 1,056,980 valid, against a winning line of 528,491, which is half the valid total plus one.

Articles 54 and 55 of the Constitution write the rules, and the Election Commission runs the poll under Article 324. What the President does once elected is in our guide to the Union executive.

Who gets a vote, and who does not

Article 54 says an electoral college elects the President: the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the states. An Explanation counts Delhi and Puducherry as states for this purpose. The 70th Amendment added them, in force from 1 June 1995.

Nominated members of either House or of any assembly cannot vote, and neither can members of state Legislative Councils, the Election Commission’s press note of 9 June 2022 says. That leaves 233 Rajya Sabha members, 543 Lok Sabha members and 4,033 MLAs, 4,809 electors in all. The 1952 college had 4,056.

The 2017 college had 4,120 MLAs from 31 assemblies. The 2022 table lists 28 states, Delhi and Puducherry, and no Jammu and Kashmir assembly. The Week reported in May 2020 that a former civil servant, Wajahat Habibullah, had written to the President arguing that the 2019 reorganisation law never amended Articles 54 and 55 to bring the new union territory’s legislature into the college. The same report says the Election Commission answered a query on the point by referring to Article 54, which names only Delhi and Puducherry.

A vacancy does not void the result. Article 71(4) says the election cannot be questioned because of a vacancy among the electors. The Commission’s records show assemblies sitting out before: Gujarat’s in 1974, Assam’s in 1982, and Jammu and Kashmir’s and Nagaland’s in 1992.

Why the Constituent Assembly chose a college over a national poll

On 13 December 1948 K. T. Shah moved an amendment to elect the President by adult suffrage. B. R. Ambedkar, chairman of the Drafting Committee, opposed it on three grounds. He counted nearly 317 million people, assumed half would be eligible, and arrived at an electorate of 158.5 million, against about 75 million in the United States as he understood it.

His second ground was staff. Polling would need government officials, he said, because outside agencies could be open to bribery, and he doubted the Union and the states could spare enough of them. The third was the office itself. The President of India, he told the Assembly, was “only a figurehead” and held nothing like the executive power of the American President.

The Assembly negatived Shah’s amendment. Ambedkar added that the electors would themselves be chosen by adult suffrage, directly in the Lok Sabha and the assemblies. The wider story of the drafting is in our account of Ambedkar and the writing of the Constitution.

How one vote gets its worth

Article 55(2) states the aim in its own words: uniformity among the states, “as well as parity between the States as a whole and the Union”. Ambedkar explained the difficulty in the same debate. Seats and population stood in different ratios from state to state, so one vote per member could not give equal weight. The problem, he said, was how to reach “uniformity in the value of the votes cast by members who do not represent the same electoral unit”.

The formula for an MLA runs in steps. Take the state’s population and divide it by the number of elected seats in its assembly. Count how many whole thousands the answer holds. If the remainder is 500 or more, add one. The result is the number of votes each MLA carries.

The Commission’s own illustration is Andhra Pradesh. Its 1971 population of 27,800,586, divided by 175 seats, is 158,860, which holds 158 thousands with 860 left over, so each MLA carries 159. The state’s total is 175 times 159, or 27,825.

Uttar Pradesh, with 83,849,905 people and 403 seats, gives each MLA 208. Sikkim, with 209,843 people and 32 seats, gives each MLA 7. A seat in Uttar Pradesh stood for about 208,000 people in 1971 terms and a Sikkim seat for about 6,600.

The MPs’ weight comes from the state totals. In 2022 the 30 states and territories added up to 543,231. Dividing by the 776 elected MPs of both Houses gives 700 each, and 776 times 700 is 543,200. MPs are about 16 percent of the electors but hold almost exactly half the value, the 1,086,431 total being 543,231 plus 543,200.

The wording of sub-clause (c), which divides the states’ total by the elected members of both Houses, comes from an amendment Ambedkar moved in 1948 to give MPs a better voice than the first draft did.

The numbers move with each census. An MP’s vote was worth 494 in 1952, 576 in 1967, 723 in 1974, 702 from 1977 to 1992, 708 from 1997 to 2017 and 700 in 2022, the Election Commission’s booklet records. Uttar Pradesh’s MLA value rose from 143 in 1952 to 208 in 1974. Sikkim’s 7 was the lowest value in each election the booklet lists from 1977 to 1992 and is the lowest in the 2022 table.

Why 1971 is still the census in the formula

Article 55 defines population as the population at the last census whose relevant figures have been published. A proviso then fixes it at the 1971 census until the figures for the first census taken after 2026 are out. The Constitution’s footnotes show the 42nd Amendment, in force from 3 January 1977, put that rule in, with a date of 2000. The 84th Amendment, in force from 21 February 2002, changed 2000 to 2026. Both went through Article 368, which our guide to the 106 amendments explains.

The same two amendments froze seat allocations for Parliament and the assemblies. PRS Legislative Research describes that freeze as a measure to encourage state governments to pursue population stabilisation.

The next census has a reference date of 00:00 on 1 March 2027, with population enumeration planned for February 2027, according to the Goa government’s note of 31 March 2026 and the Maharashtra census directorate’s slides. No figures from it exist yet. Article 56 gives a five-year term and the 2022 term began when the previous one ended on 24 July, so the next election falls due before late July 2027.

A Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on 16 April 2026 would have lifted the 1971 freeze on Lok Sabha seats and raised the House’s ceiling from 550 to 850. PRS noted that this would cut the Rajya Sabha members’ relative share in the President’s and Vice-President’s elections. The Lok Sabha negatived the bill on 17 April 2026.

What the ballot looks like and how the count runs

The Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952 and the 1974 rules govern the poll, and the timetable has been fixed in law since 1974. For 2022 the Commission notified the election on 15 June, with polling on 18 July and counting on 21 July, before the outgoing term ended on 24 July.

A candidate needs 50 electors as proposers and 50 as seconders, and a deposit of Rs 15,000. The deposit is forfeited if the candidate loses and polls no more than one sixth of the winning line. The Commission’s booklet says the five elections from 1952 to 1969 showed people standing “without even a remote chance of getting elected”. In 1967, 9 of the 17 candidates polled nothing. Parliament acted in 1974, setting 10 proposers, 10 seconders and a Rs 2,500 deposit, and again in 1997, raising them to 50, 50 and Rs 15,000. Every election from 1997 to 2022 had two candidates.

The ballot has two columns, names and order of preference, and no party symbols. The elector writes 1 against a first choice and may number further choices up to the number of candidates. Numerals can be international, Roman or those of an Indian language, but not words. Only the first preference is compulsory. The elector must use the pen the Commission supplies, and any other pen invalidates the vote.

Ballots are printed state by state with the vote’s value on each. MPs vote at Parliament House and MLAs at their own assembly. The press note says “political parties cannot issue any whip to their MPs and MLAs in the matter of voting”. By convention the Secretary General of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha serves as Returning Officer, by rotation, and counting is in New Delhi.

The Returning Officer sorts valid ballots by first preference state by state and multiplies each state’s counts by that state’s value. The quota is half the total valid value, plus one, ignoring any fraction. If valid value is 100,001, the quota is 50,001. If no one reaches it, the lowest candidate drops out and the ballots pass at their original value to the next marked preference, repeating until someone reaches the quota or one candidate remains.

The 2022 count needed none of that. PTI reports that 2,824 electors, 540 of them MPs, backed the winner, and 1,877, 208 of them MPs, backed the other candidate, with 53 ballots invalid. That is 4,754 of 4,809 electors voting. The values were 676,803 and 380,177, a total of 1,056,980. The winner held 64.03 percent of valid value on first preferences, above the 528,491 line that the Commission’s rule produces.

The one count that went past first preferences

Zakir Husain died on 3 May 1969. Vice-President V. V. Giri acted as President under Article 65(1), then resigned both posts on 20 July 1969 and was a candidate in the election that followed. Fifteen candidates were in the field and polling was on 16 August, inside the six months Article 62(2) allows.

Valid value on the first count was 836,337, so the quota was 418,169. Giri led with 401,515, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy had 313,548 and C. D. Deshmukh 112,769. Candidates were excluded one after another until two remained, Giri on 420,077 and Reddy on 405,427. Giri was declared elected on 20 August 1969, 1,908 above the quota. The final two figures add to 825,504, so 10,833 of the original value never reached either finalist.

By the booklet’s tables, it is the only one of the 15 contested elections from 1952 to 2022 in which the leader fell short of half on the first count. In 1977, after Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed died on 11 February with a general election under way, 37 nominations came in and 36 were rejected on scrutiny. Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was declared elected on 21 July 1977, the first unopposed election to the office.

Disputes go to the Supreme Court alone under Article 71(1), and its decision is final. A petition must come within 30 days of the result, from a candidate or 20 electors together. Not every member of the Assembly accepted that the system was a true single transferable vote. Mahavir Tyagi argued on 13 December 1948 that it could not be, since each elector holds many votes, and Naziruddin Ahmad asked how a contest for one seat could be proportional. Ambedkar answered that a bare majority would shut minorities out of the choice and that separate electorates were ruled out, so proportional representation, with the lowest candidate eliminated each round until one reaches the quota, was the method left.

How the Vice-President is elected

Article 66 gives the Vice-President’s election to the members of both Houses of Parliament, nominated members included, by single transferable vote and secret ballot. A candidate must be a citizen, at least 35 years old and qualified to sit in the Rajya Sabha, and needs 20 proposers and 20 seconders.

Votes carry no weights. In the poll of 9 September 2025 there were 788 members, 245 in the Rajya Sabha and 543 in the Lok Sabha, and with 7 seats vacant the effective electorate was 781. Of 767 who voted, 752 ballots were valid and 15 invalid, a turnout of 98.2 percent. One candidate polled 452 and the other 300. Half of 752 plus one is 377, so the winner cleared the line on first preferences.

The election followed a resignation. The Vice-President resigned on Monday, 21 July 2025, and the Election Commission began the process by 23 July, All India Radio reported. Article 68(2) says a casual vacancy is filled “as soon as possible”, with no outer limit, where Article 62(2) gives the President’s office six months. Polling came 50 days after the resignation, and the oath followed on 12 September.

The Vice-President chairs the Rajya Sabha under Article 64, a role covered in our guide to the Rajya Sabha, and acts as President during a vacancy or absence under Article 65. Giri did so in 1969, and Vice-President B. D. Jatti did so from February 1977 until the new President took office on 25 July 1977. The only person elected President twice, in 1952 and 1957, was Rajendra Prasad.