Now that the Election Commission has announced the schedule for the Assembly elections in five states—Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur—the stage is set for yet another bitter electoral battle between the NDA and its political rivals scattered over two other formations and many regional outfits. But, there is much more at stake in this round of elections in these states for the BJP that heads the ruling alliance at the Centre, than just the formation of new governments in these states. To be more specific, the outcome of these polls in the 690 Assembly seats and more particularly in the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, will determine whether the ruling alliance will have the edge in the presidential election in July.
The electoral college for electing the president is defined in the Constitution. Under Article 54, it comprises of the elected members of both Houses of the Parliament and elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the states, including the members of Assemblies in Delhi and Pondicherry. Article 55 says that “As far as practicable, there shall be uniformity in the scale of representation of the different states at the election of the President”.
In order to secure such uniformity among the states inter se and also parity between the states as a whole and the Union, the Constitution has laid down a formula to determine the number of votes which each elected member of Parliament and Legislative Assembly of each state is entitled to cast in this election. The formula says every elected member of the Legislative Assembly of a state shall have as many votes as there are multiples of one thousand in the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the state by the total number of the elected members of the Assembly.
Secondly, as regards MPs, it says each elected member of either House of Parliament shall have such number of votes as may be obtained by dividing the total number of votes assigned to the members of the Legislative Assemblies of the states by the total number of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament. For the calculations, the population of each state will be as per the census held in 1971. The election will be held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.
As per this formula, the value of the vote of MLAs varies from state to state. It is lowest in Sikkim(7) followed by Arunachal Pradesh (8), Mizoram (8) and Nagaland (9) and the value of the total votes from these states is also low—480 in Arunachal Pradesh, 320 in Mizoram and 540 in Nagaland. However, it is a different story when it comes to large states like UP, Maharashtra and West Bengal. UP has 403 MLAs and the value of vote of each MLA is 208. This accounts for 83,824 votes. Maharashtra has 50,400 votes in its kitty while West Bengal has 44,394.
In the last presidential election held in 2012, there were 4,120 MLAs and 776 MPs in the electoral college. The total value of MLA votes was 5,49,474 while MP votes was 5,49,408. Together, the total value of votes from 4,896 MPs and MLAs in the country was 10,98,882.
The last presidential election saw a contest between Pranab Mukherjee and Purno Sangma. The value of the total votes polled was around 10.50 lakh and Mukherjee won 7.13 lakh votes, way ahead of the number of votes needed for a majority.
Come July, the ruling NDA will have to garner over 5.5 lakh votes if it wants its candidate to safely sail through. Uttar Pradesh is the biggest among the five states going to polls in February-March and is also the state with the maximum number of votes in the presidential election. It’s MLA votes (83,824) constitutes around 8 per cent of the total votes in this election. The BJP and its allies will need to have as much of this vote in their bag prior to the election of the president next July, which means it will need to secure at least a majority in the state Assembly election.
While three of the states going to polls now are small states with minor vote share—Goa (800), Mizoram (320) and Uttarakhand (4480)—Punjab is better placed. In 2012, it had 117 MLAs with an individual vote value of 116, all adding up to 13,572. Current reports suggest that the BJP-Akali Dal alliance is fighting anti-incumbency and faces an uphill task. If that be so, the NDA will have to reconcile to losing a big chuck of the votes allotted to this state in the presidential election. This will have to be more than made up in Uttar Pradesh.
Prior to this round of Assembly elections, the NDA is estimated to have about 4.5 lakh votes in its bag. The UPA headed by the Congress has 2.3 lakh votes. The BJP and the NDA’s advantage comes from the fact that it has majorities in the Assemblies of several large states such as Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Then there are states like Jharkhand, Haryana and Chattisgarh. But, this is not enough because political parties and alliances opposed to it have majorities at the moment in larger states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Among these states, Uttar Pradesh is the only state going to polls prior to July 2017 and is therefore very crucial. Tamil Nadu with 41,184 votes is critical too and a bulk of votes could tilt in favour of the NDA candidate in the post-Jayalalithaa phase of Tamil Nadu politics if the ruling alliance in Delhi plays its cards well.
If all this works out, the NDA’s vote share could cross the 5 lakh mark. Thereafter, the NDA will have to do a mopping up operation to secure the support of smaller parties scattered across the land in order to have its candidate succeed Pranab Mukherjee as the Rashtrapati. Until then, we must keep our fingers crossed!
A Surya Prakash
Chairman, Prasar Bharati
Email: suryamedia@gmail.com