Prez polls: Patil, Shekhawat's fate to be decided

New Delhi, July 18: With just 24 hours left for the presidential polls, the race for Raisina Hills between UPA-Left nominee Pratibha Devisingh Patil and NDA-supported independent candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat has heated up with both making last ditch efforts to garner maximum support of MPs and MLAs.

However, the arithmetic of the presidential elections indicates that Ms Patil is likely to create history by becoming the first woman President of the country.

The Election Commission's judgement yesterday that voting in the Presidential polls was not mandatory and abstention would not attract disqualification has further strengthened the chances of Ms Patil's victory. However, the Commission has also clarified that the political parties could not issue any direction or whip for its members to abstain from voting as it would tantamount to undue interference.

This judgement was especially relevant in view of the United National Progressive Alliance's (UNPA) decision to abstain from voting. The UNPA had initially tried to convince present incumbent of the Rashtrapati Bhavan A P J Abdul Kalam to contest the election but following his refusal in absence of ''certainty of victory,'' the eight-party conglomerate decided to abstain from voting.

To garner support for Ms Patil, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi threw a lavish party last evening in which all MPs and MLAs were invited.

The UPA nominee has so far met most political leaders and visited various states to canvass support of MPs and MLAs in her favour while Mr Shekhawat also tried hard to become a popular choice to induce cross voting in the secret ballot.

Though initially 84 candidates had filed nomination papers, the papers of most were rejected on various technical grounds as they lacked the necessary support of 50 MPs for proposing and the same number of MLAs seconding their candidature. Only four sets of nominatons belonging to Ms Patil and two sets filed by Mr Shekhawat were found to be valid in all respect and hence accepted.

This is the first time campaigning for the Presidential polls witnessed largescale mudslinging by both the NDA and UPA-Left parties against each other's candidate. Ms Patil, who is the second woman to contest for the highest office in the country, was accused of shielding her brother in a murder case of a Congress worker and also 'financial irregularities' in the cooperative bank of which she was the founder chairperson. Ms Rajni Patil, widow of the Congress worker, even moved a PIL against the former Rajasthan Governor.

In an effort to gain high moral ground, Mr Shekhawat even declared his assets challenging the UPA nominee to do the same. Mr Shekhawat's affidavit to the Election Commission revealed that his wife owned more movable and immovable property than the Vice-President. However, Ms Patil refused to respond as it is not mandatory for any presidential candidate to declare his or her assets.

The total value of 4,896 electors' vote for the presidential polls is 10,98,882. In the election, 776 MPs are likely to participate of which 543 are from the Lok Sabha and 233 from the Rajya Sabha. The value of vote of each MP is 708 and so the total value of votes is 5,49,408. The electoral college also includes 4,120 MLAs and the total value of votes is 5,49,474.

The highest weightage of vote is of UP MLAs where the value of each vote is 208, which makes the total value of votes of the MLAs from the state 83,824 followed by Jharkhand where the value of the vote of each MLA is 176 while that of Maharashtra is 175 and Bihar 173. The lowest weightage is of Sikkim MLAs where the value of each vote is seven only.

UNI