Interesting Facts & Figures on " Fight for Rashtrapati Bhavan"

 Interesting  Facts & Figures on 

" Fight for Rashtrapati Bhavan"

Image courtesy: rashtrapatisachivalaya.gov.in

Image courtesy: presidentofindia.nic.in

Since Independence all presidents have been elected after a contest. Only one exception is Neelam Sanjiva Reddy. It is not different this time in 2017 with the opposition bloc deciding its own candidate. Hence again election for the post of President of India. The candidate put up by the establishment has always come up victorious. It is unlikely to be any different this time also.

Let us have a look at past elections -

1952   Dr  Rajendra Prasad         (83.3%)

           K T Shah                             (15.3%)

1957   Dr Rajendra Prasad           (99.0%)

           Nagendra Narayan Das      (00.4%)

1962   S Radhakrishnan                (98.2%)

           Chowdhry Hari Ram          (01.1%)

1967   Zakir Hussain                      (56.2%)

           K Subba Rao                        (43.4%)

1969   V V Giri                                (48.0%)

           N Sanjiva Reddy                  (37.5%)

1974   Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed       (80.2%)

           Tridip Chaudhuri                 (19.8%)

1977  N Sanjiva Reddy               37 candidates filed nominations.

                                                      36 rejected by the Returning                                                             Officer.

1982  Gyani Zail Singh               (72.7%)

          H R Khanna                       (27.3%)

1987  R Venkatraman                  (72.3%)

          V Krishna Iyer                   (27.5%)

1992  Shanker Dayal Sharma     (65.9%)

          G G Swell                            (33.8%)

1997  K R Narayanan                  (95.5%)

          T N Seshan                          (05.0%)

In 1997 the number of proposers and seconders for any President nomination paper was raised from 10 to 50 each.The security amount was also increased from Rs 2,500 to 15,000.

2002  APJ Abdul Kamal              (89.6%)

          Lakshmi Sahgal                  (10.4%)

2007  Pratibha Patil                      (65.8%)

          Bhairon Singh Shekhawat  (34.2%)

2012  Pranab Mukherjee              (69.3%)

          P A Sangma                          (30.7%)

There were only two candidates six times. Rest of the times there were more than two candidates. Once due to rejection of nominations of 36 candidates only one candidate remained hence elected without contest.