STV and indirect elections: Rajya Sabha, President, Vice-President and councils

Detail

1. Indirect election: the basic idea

• Indirect election: people do not vote for the post themselves. They elect representatives (MPs, MLAs), and those representatives then choose the person.
• India uses indirect elections for the Rajya Sabha, the President, the Vice-President and part of the legislative councils.
• All of them use the single transferable vote (STV). STV is one form of proportional representation (PR), a system that gives each group seats in line with its share of votes.
• Lok Sabha and assembly elections are different. They use first-past-the-post (FPTP): the candidate with the most votes wins, even without a majority.

2. Single transferable vote (STV): how it works

• Single transferable vote: each voter has one vote, but ranks the candidates 1, 2, 3 and so on. If the voter's first choice does not need the vote, it moves ("transfers") to the next choice.
• Electoral quota (the fixed number of votes a candidate needs to win):
• Quota = [total valid votes ÷ (seats + 1)] + 1
• Example: 200 Rajasthan MLAs elect 4 Rajya Sabha members. 200 ÷ (4 + 1) = 40, and 40 + 1 = 41 votes.

• Why "+1": only 4 candidates can ever reach 41 out of 200. A fifth cannot.

• Counting steps, in order: 1. Count the first-preference votes (the candidate each voter marked "1"). 2. Any candidate who reaches the quota is elected. 3. Surplus transfer: votes above the quota pass to those voters' next preferences. (Example: A gets 50 votes, so A's 9 extra votes are passed on.) 4. If nobody new reaches the quota, the lowest candidate is knocked out. That candidate's votes pass to the next preferences. 5. Steps 2–4 repeat until all seats are filled.

• What STV achieves: inside each assembly, parties get Rajya Sabha seats in line with their number of MLAs. A minority party with enough MLAs to make one quota is sure to win one seat.

• A common mistake: Class 8 NCERT says this system lets "smaller states also get fair representation". That is not accurate.
• How many Rajya Sabha seats a state gets is fixed by the Fourth Schedule, which shares out seats mainly by population.

• STV only decides who fills those seats. It does not decide how many seats a state gets.

• STV for one post (President, Vice-President): with one seat, the quota is (votes ÷ 2) + 1, which is an absolute majority (more than half of all valid votes). If nobody gets this many first preferences, the lowest candidates are knocked out one by one and their votes transferred. This is also called the preferential or alternative vote.

3. Election of Rajya Sabha members

• Strength (Art. 80):
• The maximum is 250: up to 238 elected and 12 nominated.

• The current strength is 245: 233 elected and 12 nominated by the President for knowledge of literature, science, art and social service.

• Who votes (Art. 80(4)): only the elected MLAs of each state, and of the Union Territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir, by PR-STV.

• Nominated MLAs and MLCs (members of legislative councils) do not vote.

• Permanent House (Art. 83(1)): the Rajya Sabha is never dissolved.

• Each member serves 6 years.

• One-third of the members retire every 2 years, so elections are held in turns.

• Seat sharing: the Fourth Schedule sets each state's seats. For example, Uttar Pradesh has many seats and small north-eastern states have one each.

4. Open ballot and the 2003 changes

• Background (cross-voting and money power):
• In the June 1998 Rajya Sabha election in Maharashtra, Congress candidate Ram Pradhan lost even though his party had enough votes. Congress MLAs ignored their party's instructions, and an Independent won [3].
• The Rajya Sabha Ethics Committee (set up in 1997 and headed by S.B. Chavan) said in its first report (December 1998) that "money and muscle power" played a growing role in Rajya Sabha polls. It suggested an open ballot [3].

• The Vajpayee government acted on this in 2001, and the system was adopted in 2003 [3].

• Open ballot: a voting method where the voter's choice is not secret from a named person.

• Under s.59 of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1951 (amended in 2003) and Rule 39AA of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, an MLA who belongs to a party must show the marked ballot to the party's authorised agent.

• Purpose: the party can see who cross-voted, so buying votes becomes harder.

• Domicile rule removed (2003): a Rajya Sabha candidate no longer has to be a resident or voter of the state they represent. Being a voter anywhere in India is enough.

5. Court cases

Case	Year	Issue	Held
Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India	2006	Were the 2003 open ballot and the removal of the domicile rule valid?	Both upheld
Shailesh Manubhai Parmar v. ECI	2018	Can NOTA (None of the Above) be offered in Rajya Sabha polls?	No. The ECI circulars allowing it were struck down

• Kuldip Nayar (2006):
• The case was Writ Petition (Civil) 217 of 2004, decided on 22 August 2006. It challenged the 2003 changes to ss.59, 94 and 128 of RPA 1951, saying the open ballot broke the secrecy of the vote [4].
• The petitioner was Kuldip Nayar, a veteran journalist and nominated Rajya Sabha MP [3].
• The Court said: "secrecy of the ballot is a vital principle… The higher principle, however, is free and fair elections and purity of elections. If secrecy becomes a source for corruption, then sunlight and transparency have the capacity to remove it" [3].
• The Court also said an open ballot does not hurt the MLA's freedom of expression, because an MLA is not disqualified for voting in a particular way [4].

• On domicile, the Court held that the Rajya Sabha represents the states, but federalism does not need the representative to live in that state.

• Shailesh Manubhai Parmar (2018):

• NOTA (a ballot option to reject all candidates, introduced for direct elections in 2013) is meant for direct elections.
• In an indirect, open-ballot, STV election, NOTA would weaken party discipline and help defection. So the Court held it cannot be used.

6. Cross-voting

• Cross-voting: a legislator votes for a candidate other than their own party's official candidate.
• Cross-voting alone does not lead to disqualification under the Tenth Schedule (the anti-defection law). A Rajya Sabha vote is not a vote "in the House", so a party whip does not apply to it.

• The party's remedy is political, for example expelling the member, which the open ballot makes possible.

• Himachal Pradesh, February 2024:

• Six Congress MLAs cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha poll.
• They were disqualified, but for defying the party whip on the Budget vote in the assembly, not for the cross-voting itself.
• A whip is a party's written order to its members on how to vote in the House.

7. Election of the President (Arts. 54–55)

• Electoral college (Art. 54), the body that elects the President:
• elected members of both Houses of Parliament; and

• elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the states, including Delhi and Puducherry. These two were added by the Explanation to Art. 54 under the 70th Amendment, 1992.

• Who is excluded:

• nominated MPs and nominated MLAs;
• all MLCs, including elected ones.

• NCERT's "Think about it" point: only representatives directly elected by the people vote.

• Value of votes (Art. 55): votes are weighted, meaning each vote counts for a different amount.

• Each MLA's vote reflects their state's population per MLA.
• Each MP's vote equals the total value of all MLAs' votes ÷ number of elected MPs. This keeps the states and the Union equal (parity).

• The population used is the 1971 Census, frozen until the first census taken after 2026 (84th Amendment, 2001). The full formula is in the union-executive note.

• Data, 16th Presidential Election (2022) [5]:

• The 4,796 electors were the MPs and MLAs who had a vote.
• The total value of all MLAs' votes was 5,43,231.
• Elected MPs = 543 (Lok Sabha) + 233 (Rajya Sabha) = 776.
• Value of one MP's vote = 5,43,231 ÷ 776 = 700.

• Total value of all MPs' votes = 5,43,200.

• Method: PR by STV with a secret ballot. In practice it works as an absolute-majority preferential count (Section 2).

• 1969 illustration: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called for a "conscience vote", so MPs and MLAs voted their own choice instead of following the party. V.V. Giri beat the official Congress candidate N. Sanjiva Reddy. Giri crossed the quota only after second-preference votes were counted. The political history is in congress-system-challenges.

8. Election of the Vice-President (Art. 66)

• Electoral college: all members of both Houses of Parliament, including nominated members.

• MLAs have no role.

• Method: PR by STV, secret ballot. Each vote has the same value, so there is no weighting.

• President vs Vice-President electoral college:

Feature	President (Art. 54)	Vice-President (Art. 66)
Elected MPs	Yes	Yes
Nominated MPs	No	Yes
Elected MLAs (states, Delhi, Puducherry)	Yes	No
Value of votes	Weighted (Art. 55)	Equal
Proposers and seconders	50 + 50	20 + 20
Disputes	Supreme Court only (Art. 71)	Supreme Court only (Art. 71)

• 2025 Vice-Presidential election (the 17th):
• It followed Jagdeep Dhankhar's resignation.
• The ECI announced it in its Press Note of 1 August 2025. Polling and counting were on 9 September 2025 [2].
• Of 781 eligible electors, 767 voted and 15 ballots were invalid [2].
• C.P. Radhakrishnan was declared elected as India's 15th Vice-President [2].
• The certificate of election was signed by CEC Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi [2].

9. Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952

• Nomination:
• for President: 50 proposers + 50 seconders, all from the electoral college;
• for Vice-President: 20 proposers + 20 seconders.

• Purpose: to stop people who are not serious from standing.

• Security deposit: ₹15,000 for each post.

• Returning officer: the ECI conducts both elections (Art. 324). The Secretary-General of either House is appointed returning officer in turn.
• Disputes (Art. 71):
• Only the Supreme Court can hear challenges. No High Court has this power.
• If the Court sets the election aside, the acts already done by that President or Vice-President remain valid.

10. Legislative councils (Art. 171)

• Legislative council (Vidhan Parishad): the upper House of a state legislature. It is a permanent body, and one-third of its members retire every 2 years.
• Six states have one: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.

• Jammu and Kashmir's council was abolished in 2019, when the state was reorganised.

• Size: at most one-third of the state assembly's strength, and at least 40 members.

• Composition (all elected seats by STV):

Share	Chosen by
About 1/3	MLAs of the state, from people who are not MLAs
About 1/3	Local authorities: municipalities, district boards and similar bodies
1/12	Graduates living in the state who graduated at least 3 years earlier
1/12	Teachers with at least 3 years' service, teaching at secondary level or higher
About 1/6 (the rest)	Nominated by the Governor: people known for literature, science, art, the co-operative movement or social service

• Creation and abolition (Art. 169): the assembly passes a resolution by a special majority, then Parliament passes a law. Details are in state-government-governor.

Prelims Hooks

• Quota = [votes ÷ (seats + 1)] + 1. With 200 MLAs and 4 seats, a candidate needs 41.
• A state's number of Rajya Sabha seats comes from the Fourth Schedule (based on population), not from STV.
• Open ballot in Rajya Sabha polls came in 2003 (s.59 RPA; Rule 39AA). It followed the Ethics Committee (S.B. Chavan) report of December 1998 [3].
• Kuldip Nayar (2006) upheld the open ballot and the removal of the domicile rule. Shailesh Manubhai Parmar (2018) held there is no NOTA in Rajya Sabha polls.
• Trap: nominated MPs vote for the Vice-President but not for the President. MLAs vote for the President only. MLCs vote for neither.
• 70th Amendment (1992): the MLAs of Delhi and Puducherry joined the President's electoral college. 84th Amendment (2001): the 1971 Census population is frozen until the first census after 2026.
• In the 2022 Presidential election, the value of one MP's vote was 700, with 4,796 electors [5].
• President: 50 + 50 proposers and seconders. Vice-President: 20 + 20. Deposit: ₹15,000. Disputes: Supreme Court only (Art. 71).
• C.P. Radhakrishnan was elected the 15th Vice-President on 9 September 2025 (the 17th Vice-Presidential election) [2].
• Legislative councils: 6 states, Art. 171. Graduates and teachers elect 1/12 each, and the Governor nominates about 1/6.

Mains Points

• Secrecy vs transparency: the open ballot curbs cross-voting and vote-buying [3]. But it makes the MLA a party agent, not a free representative of the state. This weakens the Rajya Sabha's role as a federal chamber (a House meant to speak for the states). Removing the domicile rule adds to this, because party leaders can be elected from any state. Kuldip Nayar (2006) chose "purity of elections" over secrecy [3].
• Cross-voting and the anti-defection gap: the Tenth Schedule does not cover Rajya Sabha votes, so cross-voting goes unpunished. Himachal Pradesh in 2024 shows the result: disqualification came only through a separate whip defiance on the Budget. Reform options are:
• bring Rajya Sabha polls under the Tenth Schedule, with the risk of making MLAs even more tied to party orders; or

• leave it to party discipline, using the open ballot as evidence.

• Weighted voting and federal balance (Arts. 54–55): MP–MLA parity and population weighting give both the Union and the states a fair share in choosing the President. The 1971 freeze (84th Amendment) protects states that controlled their population. The coming post-2026 delimitation could change this balance. The conscience vote of 1969 shows that the President's election can become a test of party power.

• Legislative councils: supporters say councils give a voice to graduates, teachers and local bodies and allow a "second look" at laws. Critics say councils delay laws, cost money, and become a place for candidates who lost elections. This is why only 6 states keep one.