Dalit Dalit

So now opposition parties led by Congress has announced their candidate for Presidential elections, Ms Meira Kumar, who is also a Dalit, like NDA’s candidate  Ram Nath Kovind. If   seems that Congress party had no choice but to select a Dalit candidate to counter NDA’s choice thinking that there might be a chance of breaking some parties who are with NDA for presidential election. They are living in fool’s paradise if they think so, in  their case so many opposition parties who are not part of NDA are supporting NDA’s candidate Ram Nath Kovind( Parties are Biju Janta Dal, Nitish Kumar’s JDU, AIDMK,  and many more smaller parties).

Few thoughts on this:

1. Congress when they were in power never thought of nominating a Dalit candidate for President’s post, and they proclaim they are well wishers of Dalits.
2. KR Narayanan, who was a Dalit, became President during the regime of IK Gujral and he got support of almost all the political parties.
3. Generally it is a well known fact the candidate selected by ruling alliance at centre becomes President, as the value of MPS and MLAs votes are known in advance  and numbers always favour ruling party/alliance. There has been only one incident  when ruling alliance did not have numbers on their side, that was in 2002. At that time  Vajpayee govt Chose APJ Abdul Kalam as their candidate, who got the backing of even opposition parties also.
4. I do not understand, knowing the numbers well in advance , why the opposition parties have to put up a candidate for the heck of contest. I only recall, there was only one serious contest up till now  for presidential elections and that was in 1969, when VV Giri supported  by break way Congress faction led by Indira Gandhi contested against N Sanjeeva Reddy, who was candidate of then official Congress party. Contest was very close and VV Giri won by  very narrow margin.
5. There have been 14 Presidential elections up till now, does any one remember the name of losing candidate, let us see in chronological order – 1952 Winner Rajendra Prasad  83.8%, Loser KT Shah 15.3%;1957 W- Rajendra Prasad 99%, L-NN Das 0.4%;1962 W- S Radhakrishnan 98.2 %, L-Hariram Chowdhary 1.1%; 1967  W-Zakir Hussain 56.2%, L-Kota Subarao 43.4%;     1969 W- VV Giri,  L- N Sanjeeva Reddy(Giri won on 2nd preference votes), 1974 W- FA Ahmed 80.2%, L-Tridip Choudhari 19.8%; 1977 W-N Sanjeeva Reddy unopposed ( after emergency); 1982 W-Gyani Zail Singh 72.7%, L-HR Khanna-27.3%, 1987 WR Venkataraman  72.3%, L- V Krishna Iyer 27.5%;1992 W- SD Sharma 65.9%, L-GG Swell 33.8%, 1997 W-KR Narayanan 95%, L-TN Seshan 5%; 2002 W- APJ Abdul Kalam 89.6%, L-Lakshmi Sehgal 10.4%, 2007 W  Ms Pratibha Patil 65.8%, L-BS Shekhawat 34.2%, 2012 W- Pranab Mukherjee 69.3%, L- PA Sangma 30.7%.
6. Out of 14 Presidential contests, 13 have been one sided contests, when the outcome is known well in advance then why the opposition parties put up a candidate and waste time and exchequer’s money.
7. In the present scenario does the Congress Party think they can break the NDA’s supporting parties and their candidate can win? It is well known fact that smaller and fringe parties will stick to NDA, as they must be feeling that Congress and like minded partie BSP, SP, RJD are sinking ship.
8. If Congress had the guts and care for Dalits, then they should have announced Meira Kumar’s candidature well in advance and waited to see NDA’s reaction but by following NDA’s step they have lost the  battle already.

So what you say my friends.

Awaiting  for your feed backs and comments.