New Delhi: Presidential election has witnessed an overwhelming response from electors as over 99% of MPs and MLAs — across the country cast their votes to elect the next President.

NDA candidate Ram Nath Kovind is pitted against the opposition's Meira Kumar in the direct contest. Counting of votes will take place on Thursday.

Voting was held in 32 polling stations, including one in Parliament House (Room No.62) and one each in every state assembly. Ballot boxes from the states will be brought to Delhi for counting.

Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Gujarat, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal, Jharkhand, Nagaland, Uttarakhand and Puducherry recorded 100% voting while in Parliament House, the voting percentage was 99%, LokSabha secretary general Anoop Mishra, who is the returning officer for the poll, said. The voting percentage for MPs was 99.61% while it was 99.37% for MLAs.

Mishra said while the sanctioned strength of LokSabha and RajyaSabha was 776, a total of 771 MPs were eligible to cast their votes. There are two vacancies each in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, while BJP MP Chedi Paswan does not have voting rights as there is a petition on his disqualification pending in Supreme Court.

The Patna high court had cancelled his membership as he had not stated the total number of criminal cases pending against him in his election affidavit. The matter came before the SC which has not decided the case till now. Out of the 771 eligible MPs, only 714 exercised their franchise in Delhi. Fifty-four MPs had sought permission to cast their vote in state capitals.

These included Goa CM Manohar Parrikar, UP CM Yogi Adityanath, his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya and Union water resources minister Uma Bharati. 

BJP chief Amit Shah, who is an MLA from Gujarat, had sought permission to cast his vote in Delhi. Trinamool Congress MPs cast their votes in Kolkata. However, TMC's Tapas Pal, BJD's Ram Chandra Hansdak and Ambumani Ramadoss of PMK did not cast their votes. PM was the first person to cast his vote, Mishra said.