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| Who will be India's next President? | | Dalit Chief Minister rejects Dalit Union Minister | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, JUNE 5
Here is unpublished newsflash from Lucknow: UP's Dalit Chief Minister, Mayawati, is not for the march of Dalit Union Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, to Rashtrapati Bhavan as the next President of India. A source close to Mayawati said on Tuesday that she has, without any fanfare, conveyed to the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, her strong reservations on the candidature of Shinde as a successor to the President President, APJ Abdul Kalam.
Mayawati's unpublished message to Sonia Gandhi has been reported at a time when the latter wanted Shinde, Union Power Minister, to be the next President. Obviously, Sonia's attempt was aimed at winning over the bulk of Dalit voters to vote for the Congress in the next Lok Sabha polls. Shinde's uncertain prospects also seem to be the outcome of the Supreme Court judgement in 2006. In its verdict the apex court declared a decision by Shinde as 'unconstitutional'. Shinde, in his capacity as Governor, had allowed a murder convict in jail to be set free. This indiscretion is going to be used against Shinde by the adversaries of the Congress party.
Who will be the next president of India? If a referendum were to be held on keeping A P J Abdul Kalam in the palatial Rashtrapati Bhavan for a second term the unassuming aero scientist with an unconventional hairstyle would have won hands down. But India’s President is not chosen by referendum. The permutations and combinations within the electoral college — comprising the elected members of the two Houses of Parliament and the State legislatures — will decide on the twelfth occupant of the New Delhi’s Raisina Hill. And as the countdown begins for the choice, a disjunction between political and popular perceptions emerges as a significant feature of today’s India.
The candidacy of Kalam, who won in 2002 with the support of both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, has been ruled out of court, among others by former Prime Minister A B Vajpayee on behalf of the BJP. So if there is an electoral college contest for President, it will be along the lines the polity stands divided at the national level now: a joint candidate of the United Progressive Alliance, the Left, and the BSP versus a candidate of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. And one thing that needs to be settled in the next couple of weeks is the name of that candidate.
A consensus seems to have already emerged among those who have the numbers to settle the occupancy of the Rashtrapati Bhavan that the next President of India must have, in addition to personal integrity, a political background, impeccable secular credentials, a fine sense of constitutional balance, and a conception of the constitutional presidency in a parliamentary form of government that scrupulously avoids over-reach. But there is no unanimity yet on the candidate.
Among the frontrunners from the Congress side of the fence, which includes the Left, is External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who seems to have edged out Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee of the CPM, who was initially the Marxists’ candidate. The names of Minister for Power, Sushil Kumar Shinde, a Dalit, and Karan Singh, a former Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, have also been doing the rounds. But all of them face a stiff challenge from Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat of BJP, who surprisingly scored a high 30.3 per cent vote in his favour in an opinion poll. Kalam of course topped the list with 43.6 per cent while Infosys chief N R Narayan Murthy came third with 18.5 per cent.
The political class appears to be of the view that the best choice would be to get both the President and the Vice-President elected unopposed. But in politics, the best option is not the one that is necessarily exercised; what often take precedence are other options propelled by circumstances. The ideal choice for the President must be an eminent Indian with a political background. Fortunately, in a vibrant democracy like ours there is no dearth of people who fit this category.
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