The

Election Commission of India The Election Commission of India (ECI) is a constitutional body. It was established by the Constitution of India to conduct and regulate elections in the country. Article 324 of the Constitution provides that the power of superintendence, di ...

held indirect 13th Presidential elections of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

on 19 July 2007.

Pratibha Patil Prathibha DeviSingh Patil (born 19 December 1934) is an Indian politician and lawyer who served as the 12th president of India spanning from 2007 to 2012. She is the first woman to become the president of India. A member of the Indian National ...

with 638,116 votes won over her nearest rival

Bhairon Singh Shekhawat Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (23 October 1923 – 15 May 2010) was the 11th vice president of India. He served in that position from August 2002, when he was elected to a five-year term by the electoral college following the death of Krishan Kant ...

who got 331,306 votes. This result meant that Pratibha Patil became the first female

President of India The president of India ( IAST: ) is the head of state of the Republic of India. The president is the nominal head of the executive, the first citizen of the country, as well as the commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces. Droupadi Murmu ...

Candidates

Official candidates

File:Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.jpg, File:Pratibha Patil 2012-02-27.jpg, On 14 June,

, the

governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

of the state of

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern si ...

, was declared by UPA as its candidate for the election. The Left and other allies of the

United Progressive Alliance United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is a centre-left political alliance of predominantly left-leaning political parties in India. It was formed after the 2004 general election with support from left-leaning political parties when no single party ...

(UPA) such as

Bahujan Samaj Party The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is a national level political party in India that was formed to represent Bahujans (literally means "community in majority"), referring to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes (OBC), alon ...

(BSP) and

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; DMK) is a political party based in the state of Tamil Nadu where it is currently the ruling party having a comfortable majority without coalition support and the union territory of Puducherry where it is curre ...

(DMK) announced their support on Patil's candidature.

Shiv Sena Shiv Sena ( IAST: ''Śiva Sēnā'') () was a right-wing to far-right Marathi regionalist and Hindu ultranationalist political party in India founded in 1966 by cartoonist Bal Thackeray. Originally emerging from nativist movements in Bom ...

, an ally of the

National Democratic Alliance National Democratic Alliance (NDA) () is a Centre-right politics, centre-right to Right-wing politics, right-wing and Conservatism, conservative Indian big tent political alliance led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was foun ...

(NDA) also supported Patil's candidature. The move came as a surprise as Patil's name was not mentioned among the probables by UPA so far. Supported unofficially by the NDA, the then Vice President,

filed his nomination as an independent candidate on 25 June 2007.

Potential candidates

File:A. P. J. Abdul Kalam in 2008.jpg, File:Shivraj Patil.jpg, File:Secretary Tim Geithner and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee 2010 crop.jpg, File:Sushilkumar Shinde.JPG, File:Dr-Karan-Singh-sept2009.jpg, File:Jessie Paul and Narayana Murthy.jpg, Amidst much speculation by various party leaders and media, a lot of names were tossed around as being probable or desired persons for holding the post. Initially

Shivraj Patil Shivraj Vishwanath Patil (born 12 October 1935) is an Indian politician who was the Minister of Home Affairs of India, from 2004 to 2008 and 10th Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 1991 to 1996. He was Governor of the state of Punjab and Administra ...

and

Pranab Mukherjee Dr. Pranab Mukherjee (11 December 193531 August 2020) was an Indian politician and statesman who served as the 13th president of India from 2012 until 2017. In a political career spanning five decades, Mukherjee was a senior leader in the India ...

(both sitting cabinet ministers) emerged as the frontrunners for the candidature. Other names which did the rounds in the UPA camp include

Sushil Kumar Shinde Sushilkumar Sambhaji Shinde (born 4 September 1941) is an Indian politician from the state of Maharashtra. He was the Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Power in the Manmohan Singh government, and the Leader of the House in Lok Sabha until ...

and

Karan Singh Karan Singh (born 9 March 1931) is an Indian politician and philosopher. He is the son of the last ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh. He was the prince regent of Jammu and Kashmir until 1952. From 19 ...

was stated to be too critical at his current responsibility to stand for the presidential elections and the Left parties opposed the candidature of Shivaraj Patil,

and Karan Singh. On the other hand, the NDA stated that it would support

, in case he decides to contest as an independent candidate. Other probables such as

N.R. Narayana Murthy Nāgavārā Rāmarāo Nārāyana Mūrthy (born 21 August 1946) is an Indian billionaire businessman. He is the founder of Infosys, and has been the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief mentor of the company before ret ...

who received significant media hype did not appear to have gathered any support from any of the sides.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Atal Bihari Vajpayee (; 25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was an Indian politician who served three terms as the 10th prime minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months fr ...

, a former prime minister who would have been NDA's probable candidate denied his desire to become the next president. On 18 June, a set of parties with allegiance neither to UPA or NDA—

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; AIADMK) is an Indian regional political party with great influence in the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It is a Dravidian party founded by the former chief mini ...

(AIADMK),

Telugu Desam Party The Telugu Desam Party (; TDP) is an Indian regional political party operating in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana at the state and central level. Since its founding by N. T. Rama Rao (often referred to as NTR) on 29 March 1982, the party has foc ...

(TDP) and

Samajwadi Party The Samajwadi Party ( SP; translation: ''Socialist Party'', founded 4 October 1992) is a Socialism, socialist political party in India, headquartered in New Delhi but mainly based in Uttar Pradesh, with significant presence in other states as w ...

(SP)—formed an alliance called the United National Progressive Alliance and announced their support for a second term for the incumbent, Abdul Kalam. On 20 June a delegation of

United National Progressive Alliance Third Front in Indian politics refers to various alliances formed by smaller parties at various points of time since 1989 to offer a third option to Indian voters, challenging the Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ...

(UNPA) met Dr. Kalam with a request to contest the presidential elections, to which he replied that he is willing to contest only if there is a certainty of winning and that he is willing to wait for a few days for this certainty. However, he soon announced he would not run. On 14 July 2007, Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly (Leader of Opposition)

J. Jayalalitha Jayaram Jayalalithaa (24 February 1948 – 5 December 2016) was an Indian politician and actress who served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for more than fourteen years over six terms between 1991 and 2016. From 9 February 1989 to 5 December 2 ...

announced that the UNPA unanimously decided to abstain from the presidential polls. However, the

held that the UNPA cannot ask its legislators to abstain from voting, quoting Section 171 C of the

Indian Penal Code The Indian Penal Code (IPC) is the official criminal code of India. It is a comprehensive code intended to cover all substantive aspects of criminal law. The code was drafted on the recommendations of first law commission of India established in ...

(IPC).

Process

As per the electoral calculation following were the number of votes for respective political parties.

Electoral College (India) The President of India is indirect election, indirectly elected with Instant-runoff voting by means of an electoral college consisting of the elected members of the Parliament of India and the State Legislative Assembly (India), Legislative asse ...

Figures are based upo
Wayback Machine
an
Rajya Sabha
Figure on

Lok Sabha The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-past ...

and

Vidhan Sabha The State Legislative Assembly, or Vidhan Sabha, or also Saasana Sabha, is a legislative body in the states and union territories of India. In the 28 states and 3 union territories with a unicameral state legislature, it is the sole legislati ...

seats do not take into consideration splits, mergers, defections, expulsions and

by-elections A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

after general elections have been held.

Know Pratibha Patil

Know Pratibha Patil is part of the political campaign launched by the

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...

(BJP) for the presidential election of 2007. It consists of a website and a

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

booklet (titled "Presidential Election 2007"), created by the BJP under the banner of Project India. Both contain the party's allegation in the form of a compilation of articles from various media. While announcing the website at a press conference, the BJP party general secretary

Arun Jaitley Arun Jaitley (28 December 1952 – 24 August 2019) was an Indian politician and attorney. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Jaitley served as the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of the Government of India from 2014 to 2019. Jait ...

also distributed a printed form of the booklet and described it as a compilation of articles / editorials from newspapers on the Presidential contest.BJP creates website on Pratibha Pati
The Hindu – 11 July 2007
/ref> The stated objective of the site is to "educate the people about

, the nominee of UPA and Indian left for Indian presidential election scheduled on 19 July 2007". To support this, the website consists of various sections like 'Cartoon,' 'Pratibhaspeak' and 'UPA Doublespeak' and includes links to video clippings and articles that refer to the various allegations levelled against Pratibha Patil. The website declares : BJP leader

talking to news-persons called the website a "campaign to provide an informed choice to the electorate (the electoral college)". "The voter has a right to the information about the candidate he is voting for. This effort is intended for an informed choice of the electorate," Jaitley said. Arun Jaitley did not respond when asked what would happen to the right of information when people are "informed" only about one of the two presidential candidates. He said the website would vanish after 21 July, when the presidential election result will be out. However, the website can still be viewed via archive.org An INC spokesperson commented:

BJP division

The Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest ...

'' BJP leaders had initially looked divided over supporting this campaign against Pratibha Patil. Party chief Rajnath Singh seemed reluctant to be drawn into a "personal attack" while senior party leader

L. K. Advani Lal Krishna Advani (born 8 November 1927) is an Indian politician who served as the 7th Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2002 to 2004. Advani is one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He is a longtime memb ...

spoke at length on the "pliant President" issue at the party's national executive last month.Know Patil better: BJP puts up websit
"Know Patil better: BJP puts up website"
''Times of India'', 11 July 2007 Daily News and Analysis also reported on the apparent differences among senior leaders on this campaign and had this quote:

Results

Source:

References

External links

Election Commission of India Official SitePresident of India Official Site
{{Indian presidential elections 2007 elections in India

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...