India’s ruling UPA candidate Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday won the Indian presidential elections by a huge margin, defeating his rival PA Sangma, backed by BJP and some other opposition parties.
Mukherjee, 76, will be sworn as the country's 13th president in the central hall of Parliament on July 25.
To be the first Bangalee to occupy the highest constitutional post, Mukherjee will succeed Pratibha Patil, India's first woman head of state.
Out of the total value votes of nearly 11 lakh, Mukherjee has so far secured 557,968, leaving Sangma way behind with 240,005 value votes as the counting of votes got over, according to parliament sources.
Emerging from the house of Mukherjee here, Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram told journalists that "I congratulate all UPA coalition partners and other supporting parties for this emphatic win of Pranab Mukherjee".
TV channels reported that Mukherjee got all the votes polled in the southern state of Kerala where Congress and its allies are in power and Left parties are the opposition.
In BJP-ruled Karnataka, Mukherjee got much more votes than Sangma due to cross-voting, they said.
BJP in Karnataka is riven by internal dissension which saw the party changing its Chief Minister in the state three times in last one year or so.
Celebrations erupted in front of Mukherjee's official residence in Delhi as also his ancestral house in a village Mirati of West Bengal state's Birbhum district and by Congress party activists in Kolkata.
Congress workers set off fire crackers, distributed sweets and sprayed each other with colour as they savoured the victory of Mukherjee.
The electoral college in Indian Presidential elections consists of members of both Houses of Parliament—Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha—and members of legislative assemblies in states. About 95 percent of the total 4896 electors, 776 members of parliament and 4,120 members of assemblies in states exercised their franchise on Thursday last.
