The race to Raisina Hill is almost over. Given how the odds are stacked, NDA candidate and former Bihar governor Ram Nath Kovind is likely to emerge as India’s 14th President when counting ends on 20 July.
Of the 776 MPs in the electoral college, well over 400 belong to the NDA fold. Of all the BJP MPs however, three attract special attention – Yogi Adityanath, Manohar Parrikar and Keshav Prasad Maurya.
Post the state Assembly polls that concluded in March, the BJP leadership decided to relieve Parrikar, a Rajya Sabha MP, of his duties as Defence Minister and reappoint him as the Chief Minster of Goa. In Uttar Pradesh, where the party stormed to victory with a historic mandate, Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath was handed the reins of power. And Keshav Prasad Maurya, BJP MP from Phulpur in UP, was made the state’s Deputy CM.
Yet, interestingly enough, none of the three resigned from their positions as MPs in the four months since. And it doesn’t take Sherlock to figure out why.
The value of an MP’s vote in the presidential election is far higher than that of any MLA. Unsure of how close the contest for President may get, the BJP was in no mood to surrender any advantage. Make no mistake, the party was well within the ambit of the law in doing so.
But did the party set a poor precedent with serving Chief Ministers staying on as MPs for as long as four months just for the sake of a presidential election?
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Within the Rules
Cabinet ministers can be sworn in without even contesting an election, but need to win a bypoll within the next six months to be able to continue in office.
It’s not six months yet and Adityanath, Maurya and Parrikar can get themselves elected to their respective state Assemblies over the next couple of months. The law prevents an individual from being an MP and an MLA at the same time, but since none of them are MLAs yet, it was perfectly legal for them to stay on as MPs.
The Political Arithmetic
How advantageous was it for the BJP to have Adityanath, Parrikar and Maurya stay on as MPs and vote in the presidential election?
The electoral college for the poll consists of all elected MPs and MLAs. The value of a vote by an elected MP is 708.
The cumulative value of the votes of the three MPs in question is therefore 2124. In comparison, if the three politicians concerned had resigned as MPs and been elected as MLAs instead by the time of the presidential poll, their combined value of votes would be a paltry 436. That’s one-fifth of their current value.
As shown in the graph below, the value of each UP MLA’s vote is 208, whereas a Goa MLA’s vote is worth a mere 20 units.
Note: If they had resigned as MPs and not been elected to the state legislatures by the time of the presidential election, their value would naturally have been nil.
The total value of votes of the electoral college is 10,98,882. If the two CMs and one deputy CM had resigned from Parliament and voted in this presidential election as MLAs, the BJP would have lost out on a total value of 1,688 units.
A Lesson From the Past?
In April 1999, a single vote had made all the difference in what was India’s most dramatic no-confidence motion ever. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 13-month-old NDA government had been toppled.
Their margin of loss? One solitary vote.
And at the heart of the controversy was the then Odisha CM Giridhar Gamang, who had walked in to Parliament to cast his vote, despite having been sworn in as Chief Minister as early as February that year.
The treasury benches in the Lok Sabha had reverberated with the chorus of “Go-Man-Go” (Go away Gamang).
But just like the BJP’s Adityanath and Parrikar in the presidential poll today, Congress’ Gamang had been well within his rights to participate in the trust vote then.
Then, the NDA had decried Gamang’s participation in the vote. And why not? It did make their government fall. Today though, the BJP has used the same trick – thrice over.
The government’s critics may claim that Adityanath, Parrikar and Maurya voting as MPs sets a poor precedent. Except, the BJP would argue that they only followed an earlier one.
(This article has been corrected. An earlier version incorrectly stated the duration of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government before it was toppled in 1999.)
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