77 votes invalid, 21 of them MPs!

They were supposed to write '1' (one) against their choice of Presidential nominees but 77 MLAs and MPs could not even manage that in the Presidential polls.

The votes of 21 MPs and 56 MLAs from across the country, with a combined value of 20,942, were rendered “invalid”.

The big surprise is that this happened despite Election Commission and parties taking extra efforts to make the MLAs and MPs, who comprises the electoral college, learn how to properly mark their preference.

The highlight is that the trend of decrease in invalid votes has been reversed. While the number of invalid votes in 1997 Presidential elections was 171, (32 MPs) it rose to 174 (42 MPs) in 2002. In the last elections of 2012, the invalid votes were 69 (15 MPs).

While 21 MP's votes with a value of 14,868 were rendered invalid, the highest figure from the states was from West Bengal where 10 MLAs (valued at 1,510) did not cast their votes in the prescribed format.

West Bengal was followed by Delhi where the votes of six MLAs, probably from the AAP, were declared invalid. BJP, which has four MLAs, had got six votes in Delhi.

Three MLAs in Karnataka also could not mark their preference properly while neighboring Andhra Pradesh also had three invalid votes. Other southern neighbors Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana did not have a single invalid vote.

There were no invalid votes from 12 states – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tripura and Uttarakhand besides the three southern states.

Invalid Votes

21 – MPs10 – West Bengal6 – Delhi4 – Jharkhand, Manipur,3 – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Punjab2 – Goa, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh.