Presidential election in India 1969

The presidential election in India in 1969 was the fifth election of the state president in India since independence and took place on August 16, 1969. It was an early election because Zakir Hussain , who was elected in 1967, suddenly died in office on May 3, 1969. The election revealed a power struggle within the Congress party between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her internal party opponents. Ultimately, the candidate Indira Gandhis, VV Giri won the election.

prehistory

Voting weight of the representatives from the states

State	Voting weight
Andhra Pradesh	125
Assam	94
Bihar	146
Gujarat	123
Haryana	94
Jammu and Kashmir	59
Kerala	127
Madhya Pradesh	109
Madras	144
Maharashtra	146
Mysore	109
Nagaland	8th
Orissa	125
Punjab	107
Rajasthan	110
Uttar Pradesh	174
West Bengal	125

The term of office of President Zakir Hussain, elected in 1967, would have lasted until 1972. After his unexpected death on May 3, 1969, the Vice President VV Giri (Congress Party) initially took over the administration of the office.

In the Congress party, it was initially not clear who should be nominated as the successor candidate. For some time there have been tensions between the old power elite of the Congress Party, mainly through the so-called "Syndicate" ( the Syndicate ), a group of regional Congress Party leaders ( K. Kamaraj , S. Nijalingappa , SK Patil , Atulya Ghosh and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy ), and the Young Turks , a group of younger, left-wing politicians who supported Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The "Syndicate" saw the opportunity to inflict a political defeat on the unloved Prime Minister and nominated former Congress Party President Neelam Sanjiva at the meeting of the Central Parliamentary Board of the Congress Party on July 11, 1969 in Bangalore with a majority of 4: 2 against the vote of Indira Reddy, who is known not to have been a follower of Indira Gandhi. In view of the 100th year of Mahatma Gandhi's birth, Indira had proposed a Dalit as a candidate with Jagjivan Ram , but was only supported in the vote by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed .

After Reddy was nominated, VV Giri, who had also been a candidate, resigned from his position as (Vice) President on July 20, 1969 and announced his candidacy as an independent candidate. According to the constitution, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Muhammad Hidayatullah took over the office of President on a provisional basis.

Another topic at the Bangalore meeting was the nationalization of banks in India. This project, which is popular with the public, was promoted by Indira Gandhi and approved at the meeting by the Congress Committee, as the “Syndicate” was divided on this issue. The interim president Giri signed the law on bank nationalization before resigning. The left parties (communists left socialists and both socialist parties SSP and PSP ) declared their support for Giri's candidacy. The opposition to the Congress Party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and Akali Dal in Punjab, as well as smaller parties that had split off from the Congress Party in previous years, also called for the election of Giri. In the congress party, individual voices, more likely the supposedly “progressive” Giri, demanded to vote instead of the “reactionary” Reddy nominated by the party leadership. Congress party president S. Nijalingappa called for strict party discipline on this issue and for the election of Reddy and reached an agreement with the two conservative opposition parties Jan Sangh and Swatantra , in which they assured that they would cast their second-preference votes to Reddy in the upcoming election forgive. Jan Sangh, Swatantra and Bharatiya Kranti Dal (in Uttar Pradesh) appointed CD Deshmukh , the former finance minister under Nehru, as their joint first choice candidate .

This alliance with the conservatives discredited the congressional leadership in the eyes of many congressional partisans. Younger, left-wing MPs from the Congress Party declared that they did not want to follow the official party line, but rather their conscience, whereupon Party President Nijalingappa threatened all dissenters with expulsion from the party. Indira Gandhi was annoyed that she had been taken by surprise by the "Syndicate" on the question of the presidential succession, but did not dare to speak out against Reddy. But she made it publicly clear that she considered party discipline to be of secondary importance on this issue.

On July 14, 1969, the dates of the election were announced. Candidate proposals could be submitted until July 24, 1969. The admission of the candidates was decided on July 26, 1969 and those admitted to the election had until July 29, 1969 to withdraw their candidacy. The actual election took place on August 16, 1969 and the votes were counted on August 20, 1969.

Election mode and choice

See also : Electoral College (India)

The Electoral College formally comprised 4,137 parliamentarians. Of these, 748 came from the two chambers of the Indian parliament (520 Lok Sabha, 228 Rajya Sabha) and 3,389 from the parliaments of the 17 federal states. 694 members of parliament and 3,340 members of state parliaments exercised their right to vote. The voting weights were based on the 1961 census. Each member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha had a voting weight of 576 and the voting weights of the state MPs ranged from 8 (Nagaland) to 174 (Uttar Pradesh).

24 candidate proposals were submitted, 9 of which were not accepted. That left 15 candidates, of which only three had a real chance, Giri, Reddy and Desmukh.

The result was the following:

candidate	First preference votes		with votes of subordinate preference
	given weighted votes	in percent	given weighted votes	in percent
VV Giri	401,515	48.01	420,077	50.89
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy	313,548	37.49	405.427	49.11
CD Deshmukh	112,769	13.48	-	-
Chandradatt Senani	5,814	0.70	-	-
Furcharan Kaur	940	0.11	-	-
Rajabhoj Pandurang Nathuji	831	0.10	-	-
Pandit Babu Lal Mag	576	0.07	-	-
Ch. Hari Ram	125	0.01	-	-
Sharma Manovihari Anirudh	125	0.01	-	-
Khubi Ram	94	0.01	-	-
Bhagmal	0	0	-	-
Krishna Kumar Chatterjee	0	0	-	-
Santosh Kumar Kachhwaha	0	0	-	-
Ramdular Tripathi Chakor	0	0	-	-
Ramanlal Purushottam Vyas	0	0	-	-
total	836,337	100	825.504	100

4,034 MPs took part in the election, which corresponds to a turnout of 97.5%. 79 votes were invalid. Five of the 15 candidates had not received a single vote.

The election was carried out in order of precedence , ie the voters had the opportunity to mark candidates of subordinate (ie second, third, etc.) preference on the ballot papers. When the first preference votes were counted, it was found that none of the candidates had achieved a majority. Giri was in the lead with 48.01%, followed by Reddy with 37.49% and Desmukh with 13.48%. All other candidates ended up far behind. Then, following the electoral rules, the candidates with the lowest number of first preference votes were eliminated one after the other from the ballot papers (the following then moved up one position) until one candidate had the majority of the first preference votes. It turned out that Reddy had received far more subordinate preference votes than Giri, who, however, won the election with just under 50.89%.

VV Giri was declared elected and took office as the fourth President of India since independence on August 24, 1969.

Analysis of voting behavior

Majorities by state (final count): VV Giri N. S. Reddy



The following table shows the results by state.

legislative branch	total	Indeed †	Votes cast	First count						Second count ††
				Invalid	Giri	Reddy	Desmukh	Other	Congress deviator	Invalid	Giri	Reddy
houses of Parliament	748	747	743	9	359	268	101	6th	160	8th	366 (+7)	360 (+92)
Andhra Pradesh	287	285	281	9	131	118	18th	5	80	6th	137 (+6)	129 (+11)
Assam	126	113	112	6th	48	57	1	0	20th	0	48	58 (+1)
Bihar	318	318	317	4th	165	111	36	1	5	2	167 (+2)	144 (+33)
Gujarat	168	168	168	1	12	102	51	2	0	7th	21 (+9)	139 (+37)
Haryana	81	78	78	0	37	32	8th	1	10	1	37	40 (+8)
Jammu and Kashmir	75	71	70	2	58	8th	2	0	55	0	58	10 (+2)
Kerala	133	131	128	3	103	15th	0	7th	0	7th	103	15th
Madhya Pradesh	296	291	277	4th	103	112	54	4th	60	5	108 (+5)	160 (+48)
Maharashtra	270	269	268	2	50	201	12	3	0	3	56 (+6)	207 (+6)
Mysore	216	214	214	6th	53	135	17th	3	0	3	57 (+4)	148 (+13)
Nagaland	52	52	50	7th	38	4th	0	1	-	1	38	4th
Orissa	140	139	133	5	67	15th	46	0	15th	0	74 (+7)	54 (+39)
Punjab	104	104	101	3	80	10	7th	1	20th	1	80	17 (+7)
Rajasthan	184	181	180	6th	35	98	41	0	10	0	42 (+7)	132 (+34)
Tamil Nadu	234	233	230	6th	142	54	22nd	6th	0	8th	146 (+4)	70 (+16)
Uttar Pradesh	425	425	423	6th	181	138	93	5	75	7th	228 (+47)	182 (+44)
West Bengal	280	279	274	1	248	25th	0	0	30th	0	248	25th

^† The actual number of MPs was lower than the theoretical because some seats were vacant.
^†† In brackets, the subordinate preference votes gained.

It was found that a large number of Congress Party MPs from the state parliaments had not followed the official party line. Around 160 members of the Congress of the Indian parliament also did not vote for the preferred candidate of the party leadership. In the states that were not dominated by the Congress Party ( West Bengal , Kerala and Tamil Nadu ), Giri had received practically all the votes he could get. Overall, the election was a heavy defeat for the “Syndicate” and Congress Party President S. Nijalingappa, and the balance of power in the Congress party shifted in favor of Indira Gandhi.

In the same year the Congress party split.

Web links

• Election to the Office of the President 2012. (PDF) Indian Election Commission, 2012, accessed on April 11, 2015 (English, detailed explanation of the election process based on the 2012 election). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} J. K. Chopra: Politics of Election Reforms in India. Mittal Publications, Delhi 1989, ISBN 81-7099-103-X , pp. 120f
2. ^ Report on the Fourth General Elections in India 1967: CHAPTER XIII: THE PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE-PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. (pdf) Election Commission of India, 1967, p. 108ff , accessed on April 11, 2015 (English). 
3. ↑ Srinath Raghavan: Twists & turns of 1969 presidential race still the most sensational. The Times of India, June 18, 2012, accessed April 13, 2015 . 
4. ^ ^{A b c d} Zaheer Masood Quraishi: The Indian Presidential Election (1969). The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 31, No. 1 (January-March 1970), pp. 32-59 JSTOR 41854360
5. ↑ ^{a b} T. V. Sathyamurthy: The Crisis in the Congress Party: The Indian Presidential Election. The World Today, Vol. 25, No. 11 (Nov. 1969), pp. 478-487 JSTOR 40394209
6. ^ Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr .: The Congress in India - Crisis and Split . In: Asian Survey . tape 10 , no. 3 . University of California Press, March 1970, pp. 256-262 , JSTOR : 2642578 (English).
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Election to the Office of the President 2012. (pdf) Indian Election Commission, 2012, accessed on February 18, 2015 (English, detailed explanation of the election process based on the 2012 election).