Presidential election in India 1982

The 1982 presidential election in India took place on July 12, 1982. It was the eighth presidential election in India since independence. The official candidate of the Congress Party , Giani Zail Singh, was elected . He was the first and so far only Sikh in the highest Indian state office.

prehistory

Voting weight of the representatives from the states

State	Voting weight
Andhra Pradesh	152
Assam	(128)
Bihar	174
Gujarat	147
Haryana	112
Himachal Pradesh	51
Jammu and Kashmir	83
Karnataka	136
Kerala	152
Madhya Pradesh	130
Maharashtra	187
Manipur	18th
Meghalaya	17th
Nagaland	9
Orissa	149
Punjab	116
Rajasthan	129
Sikkim	7th
Tamil Nadu	176
Tripura	26th
Uttar Pradesh	208
West Bengal	151

In the Indian parliamentary elections in 1980 , Indira Gandhi's congress party won a landslide victory over the divided opposition parties (especially the Janata Party and Lok Dal ) and achieved a two-thirds majority of the seats in the Lok Sabha . The Congress Party was also successful in most elections to the state parliaments. The majority in the Electoral College , which according to the Indian constitution elects the president for 5 years, was clear. The term of office of incumbent President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy ended on July 24, 1982.

Attempts by the opposition parties to nominate a joint consensus candidate were blocked by Indira Gandhi. Then, most opposition parties agreed to Hans Raj Khanna , a non-party former judge of the Supreme Court ( Supreme Court of India ) as a joint candidate. Since the 1970s, the political climate in the state of Punjab had become more and more radical. Radical Sikhs went on a course of confrontation with the Indian federal government. In order to accommodate the Sikhs, Indira Gandhi therefore decided to nominate a Sikh, the former Chief Minister of Punjab , Giani Zail Singh. Singh, who had little education and could not compete intellectually with his predecessors in office, was seen by the opposition as a mere puppet of the prime minister, whose main qualification for the office was unconditional loyalty to Indira Gandhi. It was rumored that he would take a broom and sweep Indira Gandhi's workroom if she asked him to.

Singh was supported by the Congress Party, most of Akali Dal in Punjab, AIADMK and DMK in Tamil Nadu , JKNC in Jammu and Kashmir , the Muslim League in Kerala and other small parties. Janata Party, Lok Dal, BJP , Congress (S) , the communist parties CPM and CPI and others supported Khanna.

Election process and result

Majorities by state: Giani Zail Singh Hans Raj Khanna



→ Main article : Electoral College (India)

On June 9, 1982, the election date and the associated deadlines were announced. Candidates could be nominated until June 23, 1982. A total of 58 nominations were submitted, with some candidates being named multiple times. A decision was made on the nominations on June 24, 1982, with all nominations, with the exception of the Singh and Khanna cases, being rejected due to formal deficiencies (e.g. non-payment of the fee). In the election there were only two candidates. The election took place on July 12, 1982.

The electoral college was formally composed of 524 elected Lok Sabha and 232 elected Rajya Sabha MPs, as well as 3,827 MPs from the state parliaments. Since the state of Assam was under president's rule , its MPs did not take part in the election. The voting weights of the states were based on the 1971 census and had remained unchanged since the last election in 1977.

The votes were counted on July 15, 1982.

candidate	Weighted votes	in percent
Giani Zail Singh	754.113	72.73
Hans Raj Khanna	282,685	27.27
total	1,036,798	100.0

Giani Zail Singh was declared elected and took office on July 25, 1982.

Web links

• Election to the Office of the President 2012. (PDF) Indian Election Commission, 2012, accessed on March 27, 2015 (English, detailed explanation of the election process based on the 2012 election). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} J. K. Chopra: Politics of Election Reforms in India. Mittal Publications, Delhi 1989, ISBN 81-7099-103-X , pp. 131ff.
2. ↑ Assam was placed under president's rule in March 1982 and its members did not take part in the election.
3. ^ Ananth V. Krishna: India Since Independence: Making Sense Of Indian Politics. TBS, Delhi 2010, ISBN 978-81-317-3465-0 , p. 248.
4. ↑ Kuldip Singh: OBITUARY: Zail Singh. The Independent, December 29, 1984, accessed March 13, 2016 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Election to the Office of the President 2012. (PDF) Indian Election Commission, 2012, accessed on March 27, 2015 (English, detailed explanation of the election procedure based on the 2012 election).