Thursday, June 14, 2007

Contrasting Vote Values Of Presidential Polls

Legislators of all 30 Indian states comprise the electoral college voting for a president, but they all are not equal. While a Sikkim legislator's vote is counted as seven votes, an MLA from India's largest state Uttar Pradesh has a vote value of 208.

An MLA's vote value is calculated on the basis of the population, according to the 1971 census, of the state the member belongs to.

In order to provide uniformity to the representation of the state at the election, an MLA's vote is calculated by dividing the total population of the state by the number of legislators it has in its assembly, which is multiplied by 1,000, according to the voting pattern prescribed in the constitution.

For example, total population of Andhra Pradesh, according to the 1971 census, is 43,502,708 and the total number of seats in the state assembly is 294. Therefore, the vote value of an Andhra Pradesh MLA is 148.

The vote value of legislators from various states is given below:

Andhra Pradesh: 148
Arunachal Pradesh: 8
Assam: 116
Bihar: 173
Chhattisgarh: 129
Goa: 20
Gujarat: 147
Haryana: 112
Himachal Pradesh: 52
Jammu and Kashmir: 72
Jharkhand: 176
Karnataka: 131
Kerala: 152
Madhya Pradesh: 131
Maharashtra: 175
Manipur: 18
Meghalaya: 17
Mizoram: 8
Nagaland: 9
Orissa: 149
Punjab: 116
Rajasthan: 129
Sikkim: 7
Tamil Nadu: 176
Tripura: 26
Uttarakhand: 64
Uttar Pradesh: 208
West Bengal: 151
Delhi: 58
Puducherry: 16

The total number of legislators in the country is 4,120 whose vote value is 549,474.

As for parliamentarians, an MP's vote value is fixed at 708. It is calculated by dividing the total value of all legislators' votes by the number of MPs.

The number of MPs is 776 - 543 in the Lok Sabha and 223 in the Rajya Sabha. Nominated members do not have voting rights.

Thus, total electors for the presidential election is 4,896 and the total votes in the electoral college are 1.098 million.

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