New Delhi, June 12: The MPs and MLAs who form the electoral college that elects the President are entitled to vote secretly under the Constitution and can therefore defy the party whip with impunity.

The President is elected by the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and the state Assemblies, including those of Delhi and Puducherry. Nominated members of any House — such as Rajya Sabha MPs Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha — are not part of the electoral college.

Voting is done through secret ballot, former Lok Sabha secretary-general Subhas Kashyap confirmed. He said one can infer cross-voting if a nominee receives less — or more — than the expected votes but no member’s individual choice can be traced.

In any case, the anti-defection law cannot be used in a presidential election even if a member acknowledges that he or she had voted against the party whip.

Kashyap cited how, in 1969, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi got V.V. Giri elected instead of official Congress nominee Neelam Sanjiva Reddy by urging members to vote according to their conscience.

A powerful party lobby that included leaders such as Morarji Desai, Kamaraj and Nijalingappa and was opposed to Indira Gandhi had secured Reddy’s nomination at a meeting that Indira had stayed away from. She later got Giri, who was the Vice-President, to resign and join the fray as an Independent candidate.

Giri won by a narrow margin with a slice of the Congress votes and strong support from Opposition groups such as the communists and the Akalis.

Kashyap also clarified that a minister need not resign if he becomes the party nominee for the post. There are precedents of ministers resigning after filing their nomination papers, but there have been others who continued in office till the result was out, he said.

The general rule is that one should not hold an office of profit while running for President, but a minister’s post is not considered an office of profit and is therefore an exception to the rule, he clarified.

“It is therefore a minister’s personal choice whether or not to resign. A minister may resign on principle but it is not mandatory to do so,” he said.

The electoral college has 4,896 members in all: 776 MPs and 4,120 members of the legislative Assemblies. The combined value of the votes is 10,98,882, with those of the MLAs worth 5,49,474 and those of the MPs worth 5,49,408.