by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
The job of the President of India surely glows with gravitas, complete with a bespoke palace on Raisina Hill that could make the White House in Washington look modest. The words in the Constitution defining the position of its occupant in the Indian republic are also grand. Article 53(1) says that the executive power of the Union shall be vested in the President.
But these are just words as the issue of the President’s power was settled way back in the 1940’s, with B. R. Ambedkar, draftsman of the Constitution, favouring a truly powerful chief executive, and the Gandhi-Nehru clique, on the other hand, being all out for powerful legislature. The latter won. No wonder the same article goes on to underline that (19-3): “Nothing in this article shall…prevent Parliament from conferring by law functions on authorities other than the President”. The fact that the Indian President is merely a titular head is known to school students, so his election should hardly attract either politicians’ get-up-and-go or even common man’s interest. Yet, politicians have always given the Presidential election—with its cumbersome calculation of votes—more weightage than it rightfully deserves.
In the Sixties, Indira Gandhi, in her early years as prime minister, wanted her protégé V. V. Giri to become President but her right-wing ‘syndicate’ in the party had Neelam Sanjiva Reddy as its candidate. Giri won, but not until the differences escalated and led to split in the Congress. In the Nineties, K. R. Narayanan easily glided through the election when the electoral college was badly splintered, thanks to the Mandal-era politics then prevalent, and everybody thought the former student of London School of Economics would be too scholarly to be assertive in India’s cutthroat political environment. Yet, it is this short and unassuming Dalit who surprised all when he refused to dismiss two state governments, of Kalyan Singh and Rabri Devi, despite being pushed by I. K. Gujral and A. B. Vajpayee respectively. But the Rashtrapati Bhavan can truly prove to be a gilded cage for over-ambitious politicians, as it happened with present President Pranab Mukherjee, who had aspired to the prime minister’s post occupied by Manmohan Singh and had gone some way in gathering support of UPA partners until Sonia Gandhi got him summarily despatched to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Mukherjee’s term is due to end on 25 July, before which his replacement must be elected. Except Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, no other president had a second term, nor is it likely that Mukherjee, a dyed-in-the-wool Congressman, will have too many helping hands stretching out from a predominantly pro-BJP electoral college. The total voting strength of the 776 MPs and 4,120 MLAs translates into 10,98,882 votes (each MLA has a voting strength multiplied by a factor of his state’s population), the halfway mark being 549,442. The ruling NDA is already ahead of it and is adding on to the lead after every election. There is little doubt, therefore, that the new occupant of the best address in Delhi will be a man (or woman ?) approved by the ‘saffron brotherhood’, if not being one of it.
Earlier, in 2002, BJP under Vajpayee as prime minister boldly supported ‘missile man’ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. Given a chance, the party could produce a hard-core saffronite from its RSS stable. But it did nothing of that sort. Kalam, in his turn, made the BJP proud. Being a Muslim president, he still supported the Uniform Civil Code, an issue close to the BJP’s heart for decades. Moreover, he was not given to pussy-footing on dismissal of state governments headed by leaders mired in corruption charges. In 2005, he dismissed the Bihar government headed by Rabri Devi, a task that his predecessor, Narayanan, had refused to carry out. It is a fact that Kalam did not oblige hard-core nationalists as he prolonged the mercy petition of Afzal Guru, the mastermind of the plan to attack the Indian Parliament. But Kalam’s choice brought to the Vajpayee set-up a rare respectability in both domestic and international spheres as this aeronautics scientist was held in high esteem. In the Vajpayee years, the BJP ruled only through a coalition and its grip on national politics was still unsure. A pacifist and multiculturist at the Rashtrapati Bhavan was an asset then.
In 2017, things have undergone a sea-change. Apart from holding more than half the Lok Sabha seats on its own, the BJP, singly or through allies, is in power from the hills and the plains to the seas. Modi has succeeded in doing what Vajpayee couldn’t, winning states after states. It is no time for an ideologically driven leader like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, or his fellow-thinkers like party president Amit Shah and RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagawat, to shelter behind a façade of goody goody liberalism and be content with the party’s elders from the pre-Modi era. Example: L. K. Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi, Kariya Munda and half a dozen more. The new names that are surfacing are hard-boiled RSS men who are also Dalit: like 73-year-old cabinet minister Thawar Chand Gehlot, a Dalit. Also in the running is Satyanarayan Jatia, a jatav (Mayawati’s caste). Though he was denied Lok Sabha ticket, the party rewarded him with a Rajya Sabha seat. There may be an unknown, unsung RSS Dalit hero for the post. The presidential poll is like Udyog Parv in the Mahabharata. The previous assembly elections are a testimony to abiding upper caste support to BJP. Modi himself claimed that he is an OBC and garnering non-Yadavs in big numbers. He is now eyeing the Dalits who were never part of saffron dispensation. Modi, ever since his arrival at 7 Race Course Road (Lok Nayak Marg), has done everything possible to embrace the legacy of Dr Ambedkar. A Dalit commitment completes the circle. Political pundits are unnecessarily misplacing their bets on yesteryears’ horses.
