Veteran leader Pranab Mukherjee was elected the 13th President of India on Sunday. He becomes the first Bengali to be elected President. The former Union finance minister defeated the nominee of the BJP, BJD, AIADMK and SAD, Mr P.A. Sangma, by a huge margin in a straight fight that witnessed divisions in the Opposition-led NDA and Left camps. The ruling UPA, on the other hand, remained intact after the Trinamul Congress decided at the last minute to back Mr Mukherjee.
Mr Mukherjee, for long the No. 2 when he was in government, will be sworn in as the holder of India’s highest office by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia at a ceremony in the Central Hall of Parliament House at 11 am on Wednesday.
Soon after the swearing-in ceremony, Mr Mukherjee will go to Rashtrapati Bhavan where he will be received on the forecourt by outgoing President Pratibha Patil. Mr Mukherjee will then escort Ms Patil to her temporary accommodation in Tughlak Lane where she will stay till her post-retirement home in Pune is ready. Ms Patil will deliver a farewell speech in the Central Hall on Monday evening.
It was a one-sided election. While the 76-year-old Mr Mukherjee secured a vote value of 7,13,763, garnering 69.3 per cent of the total 10,29,750 valid votes polled, Mr Sangma trailed far behind with a vote value of 3,15,987 in polling that saw heavy cross-voting against him, and in favour of Mr Mukherjee, by BJP MLAs in Karnataka.
As many as 81 votes (vote value of 18,221) were declared invalid. “I declare that Shri Pranab Mukherjee has been duly elected to the office of President of India,” returning officer and Rajya Sabha secretary-general V.K. Agnihotri said after more than seven hours of counting. Mr Agnihotri will send a copy of the result and the victory certificate to the law ministry to enable the government to initiate the process of installing the new President. A similar copy will be sent to the Election Commission.
After being elected, Mr Mukherjee said, “Now they have entrusted me with the responsibility to protect, to defend and to preserve the Constitution as President of the republic. I will try to justify, in as modest a way as I can, to be trustworthy to the people.”
Visibly moved, he said he had received much more from the people, from the political establishment, from Parliament, and from all sections of the people he had come across in his five decades of public life. “I have received much more from the country, its political establishment and Parliament than what I have given,” he said.