New Delhi, 26 June
A social worker from Tamil Nadu and a professor from Delhi has submitted his nomination papers to contest the presidential election on July 18, by the name of RJD founder Lalu Prasad Yadav, who lives in a Mumbai slum.
While NDA candidate Draupadi Murmu and common opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha are the main candidates, at least 30 others have also filed their nomination papers for the elections with the Returning Officer, Rajya Sabha Secretary General PC Modi.
Sanjay Savji Deshpande, a resident of Amar Nagar slum number 1 in Mumbai’s Mulund suburb, was among those who filed his nomination papers, days after the elections were announced on June 9.
Lalu Prasad Yadav, a resident of Saran in Bihar, T Ramesh, a social activist from Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district, and Professor Dayashankar Agrawal from Timarpur in Delhi are other nominations that have caught the attention of some in the presidential nomination.
Most of the nomination papers do not have mandatory names and signatures of proposers and supporters or do not carry a bank draft of Rs 15,000 as security deposit and are rejected.
Some presidential candidates from Maharashtra have listed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP President JP Nadda, former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, local MPs and MLAs as proposers and supporters, but left the signature column blank. .
Among those who have submitted their nomination papers also include Pareshkumar Manubhai Mulani from Ahmedabad, Ved Vyas from Mahendragarh in Haryana, Ashok Shankar Patil from Dhule in Maharashtra, Vivek Sakharam Bagekar from Pune, Amit Kumar Sharma from Shahdara in Delhi, Ravikumar Kesagani from Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Kankanla Penchala Naidu from Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, Dr K Padmarajan from Salem in Tamil Nadu and Saira Bano Mohammad Patel from Andheri, Maharashtra.
There were 17 candidates in the fray in the 1967 presidential election – the most ever.
Zakir Hussain was elected the third President of India.
The fifth presidential election in 1969, which was necessitated by Hussein’s death, had 15 candidates in the fray. The election is considered one of the most interesting for the presidency as the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called for a “conscience vote” for the defeat of official candidate Neelam Sanjiva Reddy while battling opponents within the Congress.
Independent candidate Varaha Venkata Giri then became the President.
In 1974, the Election Commission amended the Presidential and Vice Presidential Elections Act to introduce a security deposit of Rs 2,500 for those wishing to contest elections.
The commission made it mandatory for the nominees to have at least 10 members of the electoral college as movers and another 10 as seconders.
In 1997, before the 11th presidential election, the number of proposers and supporters was increased from 10 to 50, while the security deposit was increased to Rs 15,000.