<P> The President of India is indirectly elected by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both houses of parliament, the elected members of the Legislative assemblies of the 29 states and the elected members of the legislative assemblies of the Union Territories of Delhi and Puducherry . As of 2017, the electoral college comprises 777 MPs and 4,120 MLAs . The system assigns varying numbers of votes to these electoral college members, such that the total weight of MPs and those of MLAs is roughly equal and that the voting power of states and territories are proportional to their population . Overall the members of the electoral college were eligible to cast 1,098,903 votes, yielding a threshold for a majority of 549,452 votes . </P> <P> The nomination of a candidate for election to the office of the President must be subscribed by at least 50 electors as proposers and 50 electors as seconders . The election is held by means of a secret ballot under the single transferable vote system . The manner of election of President is provided by Article 55 of the Constitution . </P> <P> The returning officer for the election was Anoop Mishra, the Secretary General of Lok Sabha . </P> <P> At the time of the election the NDA coalition itself was short of a majority by about 25,000 votes, but was expected to be able to rely on other parties to breach the small deficit without difficulty . </P>

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