NDA’s prez pick high on optics, symbolism

Rashid Kidwai

Senior Journalist and Author

PRESIDENTIAL polls have a history of turning the country’s political fortunes. The numbers game for Rashtrapati Bhavan began in 1967 when the united Opposition, under the banner of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal, nominated former Chief Justice of India K Subba Rao for the President’s post. Justice Rao was the author of the judgment in Golaknath vs State of Punjab, where he ruled that fundamental rights could not be amended by Parliament. The Congress, led by Indira Gandhi, was quick to oppose Subba Rao. She sought support from the Left parties to get Dr Zakir Hussain elected as President.

When President Zakir Hussain died on May 3, 1969, in office, Indira stunned her own party managers by backing VV Giri. The Congress party had issued a whip to all party members to vote for Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy. Indira appealed to all Congress MPs and MLAs to vote according to their “conscience”. VV Giri was elected and Indira was subsequently expelled from the Congress.

The build-up for the presidential elections 2022 started six months ago when the Opposition was viewing it to be some sort of a contest as the combined strength of the NDA was short of 50 per cent in the electoral college that elects the President. Some leaders in the Opposition had a calculation, counting heavily on the possible electoral success of the Samajwadi Party-RLD combine in Uttar Pradesh and the Congress’ success in the Uttarakhand Assembly polls that would have depleted the NDA vote kitty further. The names of two towering personalities, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Sharad Pawar, were zeroed in on as the Opposition’s nominees, though Kumar has constantly denied such a possibility. It was also proposed that poll strategist Prashant Kishor would try to bring Andhra Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao into the Opposition camp to make the contest far closer than expected.

However, this grand strategy never took off. The re-election of the Yogi Adityanath government in UP and the assumption of power by the Pushkar Dhami dispensation in Uttarakhand dealt a blow to the Opposition’s game-plan. Next, Kishor fell out with the Congress and announced his focus on Bihar. The subsequent political uncertainty in Maharashtra, the Congress’ obsession with the Enforcement Directorate’s probe into the National Herald case and other events further eroded the Opposition ranks.

When Mamata Banerjee took the initiative to search for a joint Opposition nominee, Pawar ruled himself out, followed by Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Hurriedly, the Opposition opted for Yashwant Sinha, former Union Finance Minister and IAS officer-turned-politician. The former BJP stalwart, however, lacks the ability to penetrate the NDA vote bank. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar quickly announced support to NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu.

The selection of Murmu, an Adivasi politician from Odisha, has been hailed as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s masterstroke by the BJP-NDA leaders. The choice seems high on optics and symbolism. The country has had a woman President, Pratibha Patil, whose tenure (2007-12) was lacklustre. GG Swell, a tribal Christian, had unsuccessfully contested the 1992 presidential elections against Dr Sharma.

A closer look at the past presidents would tell a fascinating story of those holding the high office having a streak of an independent mind. Rajendra Prasad’s differences with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru are well documented. Even Giani Zail Singh, initially viewed as an ‘Indira Gandhi loyalist’, went on to give some difficult moments to PM Rajiv Gandhi, launching against him a war of nerves of extraordinary ferocity. Despite his four-fifths majority in the Lok Sabha, and, perhaps, because of the Bofors allegations, Rajiv lived in constant dread of a presidential proclamation dismissing him and dissolving the House. He heaved a sigh of relief only when Zail Singh's term was over on July 24, 1987.

Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, KR Narayanan and APJ Abdul Kalam often asserted themselves on significant government pronouncements. Sharma, a lifelong Congressman before becoming the Vice-President and President, had questioned PM PV Narasimha Rao’s handling of events leading to the Babri demolition. Sharma issued one of the strongest presidential fiats ever witnessed in independent India. His directive to the government of the day on December 6, 1992 which was to do all that was necessary to preserve peace and ensure the rule of law might have been an unusual step for a constitutional Head of State.

Like Sharma, Narayanan, too, had a formidable reputation of going for larger public interest. His Republic Day addresses were keenly heard and the statesman made a habit of taking a dig at the government. And it was not the BJP-NDA alone which got a taste of Narayanan’s medicine. When the then United Front government tried to impose President’s rule in Uttar Pradesh in 1997 after a failed attempt to dislodge the Kalyan Singh government, Narayanan returned the Cabinet’s recommendation for the proclamation of Central rule in the state. It marked a decisive transformation of the much-abused powers of Central governments to end the rule of their political opponents in the states. Narayanan also made a strong case for the reservation of Dalits in the judiciary, writing letters to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Kalam’s sequel to his bestseller Wings of Fire gives a picture of his uneasy relationship with the UPA government from May 2004 till his term as President expired in July 2007. The former President admitted that he had had problems with the Office of Profit Bill of 2006, which sought to protect Sonia Gandhi from disqualification as MP from Rae Bareli. Sonia later resigned and got re-elected.

Kalam, in his memoirs, has also mentioned a purported episode involving the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a scene apparently so “touching” that he did “not want to describe it”. In October 2005, Kalam told the Prime Minister he would step down following the Supreme Court’s adverse verdict on the dissolution of the Bihar Assembly. The apex court had described that year’s May 23 presidential proclamation dissolving the Bihar Assembly as unconstitutional and termed Kalam’s decision “mala fide”.

President Pranab Mukherjee refrained from getting active in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. But it was an open secret that Mukherjee often chided both the Manmohan Singh and Modi governments for ‘ordinance raj’ and other procedural matters.

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