Prez polls: Murmu consolidates lead after 2nd round of counting

NEW DELHI: The NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu on Thursday consolidated her lead after the second round of counting by getting nearly 72 percent votes of the total votes of all MPs and MLAs of 10 states counted so far.

Murmu is inching towards victory and is set to cross the 50 percent mark soon, as her vote value now reached 4,83,299, while her rival Yashwant Sinha's vote value reached 1,89,876. While Murmu received votes of 809 MLAs out of a total of 1138 MLAs in 10 states, with a vote count of 1,05,299, Sinha got votes of 329 MLAs with a vote count of 44,276, in the second round. Among the states where votes were counted include Andhra Pradesh, where Murmu received almost all the votes, besides Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Jharkhand.

After the first round of counting, when votes of all members of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were counted, Murmu was leading with 540 of the 748 votes polled. With each MP having a vote value of 700 in this presidential election, Murmu had a total vote value of 5,23,600 which is 72.19 percent of the total valid vote count of MPs polled.

The Opposition nominee Yashwant Sinha had received 208 votes of MPs after the first round of counting, with a total vote value of 1,45,600, which is 27.81 percent of the total valid votes polled, Returning Officer P C Mody said on Thursday.

Votes of 15 MPs were declared invalid, he said, adding that all the votes of MPs have been counted.

Eight MPs did not vote in the presidential election, Mody said.

Going by the strength of the parties which officially extended support to Murmu, she is estimated to have got the votes of five to six more MPs. As many as 538 MPs of various parties had extended their support to Murmu ahead of the election, but a few of them did not vote.