press trust of india
New Delhi, July 17: Close to 99 per cent voting was recorded Monday for electing India’s 14th President, the returning officer for the poll announced.
The counting of votes will take place July 20. Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Gujarat, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Nagaland, Uttarakhand and Puducherry recorded 100 per cent voting.
In Parliament House, the voting percentage was 99 per cent, said Lok Sabha Secretary General Anoop Mishra, who is also the returning officer for the polls. He said while the sanctioned strength of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha is 776, 771 MPs were eligible to cast their votes.
There are two vacancies each in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, while one BJP MP Chedi Paswan does not have voting rights, he added. In Delhi, 717 MPs were to cast their ballot but only 714 exercised their franchise. The TMC’s Tapas Pal, the BJD’s Ram Chandra Hansdak and Ambumani Ramadoss of the PMK did not cast their votes.
Fifty-four MPs had sought permissions to cast their vote in state capitals. These included Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, his UP counterpart Adityanath, his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya and Union minister Uma Bharti. BJP chief Amit Shah, who is an MLA from Gujarat, had also sought permission to cast his vote in Delhi.
Trinamool Congress MPs cast their votes in Kolkata. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first person to cast his vote, Mishra said. He also said that except for Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Tripura, data has been received from all other states which indicate that the voting was “close to 100 per cent”.