Presidential election in India 1974

The 1974 presidential election in India was the sixth presidential election in India since independence and took place on August 17, 1974. Was elected Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed , the candidate of Indira Gandhi's Congress Party .

prehistory

The five-year term of President VV Giri (Congress Party), elected in 1969, ended on August 23, 1974. Since 1969 there had been fundamental changes in the party landscape in India. The congress party, which won the majority of parliamentary seats in the 1967 parliamentary elections but had a comparatively weak performance, split into two factions shortly after the 1969 election - on the one hand, the more conservative Congress (O), led by the old congress party squad, and on the other others the left-wing socialist Congress (R) under the leadership of Indira Gandhi. Both claimed to be in the footsteps of the old Congress party. In the parliamentary elections in 1971 , Indira's congress achieved a triumphant election victory and a two-thirds majority of parliamentary seats. The elections to the parliaments of the states in the following years were relatively successful for Indira's Congress so that the Congress (R) in the electoral college ( Electoral College ) that after the Indian Constitution selects the president had a clear majority. Indira's Congress nominated Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who was considered a loyal follower of Indira, as a candidate. The opposition parties agreed on Tridib Chaudhuri , a politician from the Revolutionary Socialist Party from West Bengal, as a joint candidate.

Change of the election regulations

Before the upcoming presidential election, the electoral modalities for the presidency were changed. The previous elections showed that the hurdle to apply for the office of president was relatively low. Under the Presidential and Vice Presidential Elections Act, 1952 , nomination for election only required the written support of a single elected MP and a second as a "second". No fee had to be paid for admission to the election. This had led to the fact that numerous people had been allowed to vote, for whom it was clear from the beginning that they had no realistic chance of voting. For example, in the 1969 election, a total of 16 candidates were admitted, 9 of which did not receive any of the more than 4,000 votes from the electoral college. A second problem was legal challenges of choice. After previous presidential elections, a plethora of complaints about alleged violations of the electoral regulations had been filed. These complaints had occupied the courts for a long time, but had all been rejected as unjustified.

The modalities of the election were therefore changed with the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Rules, 1974 . From then on, the support of at least 10 MPs and 10 other "seconds" was necessary for the nomination for candidacy. It should also pledge ( deposit ) are paid 2,500 rupees, fell into disrepair when the candidate did not receive at least 1/6 of the votes of the electoral college. A contestation of the election should only be possible if a corresponding petition was submitted to the Supreme Court within 30 days of the announcement of the election winner with the support of at least 10 MPs .

Election result

See also : Electoral College (India)

The election date was announced on July 16, 1974. Candidate nominations could be made until July 30, 1974. A total of 23 nominations for 13 candidates were submitted. The decision on the admission of the nominated candidates for election was made on July 31, 1974. All nominations except for Ahmad and Chaudhuri were declared invalid due to formal errors. Until August 2, 1974, the two admitted candidates had the option of withdrawing their candidacy, which neither made use of. The election took place on August 17, 1974, and the vote was counted on August 20, 1974.

The electoral college was composed of 521 members of the Lok Sabha , 230 members of the Rajya Sabha and 3,654 members of the state parliaments. The 182 members of the Parliament of Gujarat were not represented in the electoral college, since this parliament was dissolved on March 15, 1974 in order to hold new elections. The voting weights of the MPs had been redistributed on the basis of the 1971 census. The delegates from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha had a voting weight of 723, and the voting weight of the delegates of the states moved between 9 ( Nagaland ) and 208 ( Uttar Pradesh ). 3,160 state MPs and 687 MPs from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha cast their votes, representing a turnout of around 87%.

The result was the following:

candidate	Weighted votes	in percent
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed	765,587	80.18
Tridib Chaudhuri	189,196	19.81
total	954.783	100.0

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was declared elected on August 20, 1974 and took office on August 24, 1974.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Election of President, Vice-President and Members of Parliament: Chapter V. (pdf) (No longer available online.) Lok Sabha Secretariat, archived from the original on July 28, 2014 ; accessed on April 22, 2015 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ The Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952 (Act No. 31 of 1952). (pdf) Retrieved on April 22, 2015 (English, in the version of September 1, 1978, sections 5A and 14A, in 1997 the requirements for nomination were tightened again to 50 MPs + 50 seconds and 15,000 rupees deposit ). 
3. ↑ ^{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). 
4. ↑ ^{a b} J. K. Chopra: Politics of Election Reforms in India. Mittal Publications, Delhi 1989, ISBN 81-7099-103-X , pp. 123f