Indian Presidential Polls-2012: The Bizarre Drama Continues!

After the Mamata-Mulayam twist to the utterly unholy race towards the Presidential Elections of India in July, 2012 things are still far from honorable. While Mamata Banerji sticks to her demand of APJ Kalam as the presidential candidate her partner-of-the-moment Mulayam Singh Yadav is now on uncertain grounds. His Samajwadi Party has not still committed itself to Kalam’s candidature and is saying on the other hand that the party does not want instability in the ruling coalition in such times of economic crisis and so is against mid-term poll. This puts Mamata in a tight corner with the Congress party coming hard after her, but the lady thunders on despite her party on the verge being thrown out of the ruling coalition. 

PA Sangma, the co-founder of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), former Speaker of the lower house of Indian Parliament and former Chief Minister of the North Eastern state of Meghalaya, continues to be in the fray. This is despite the fact that his party the NCP—a constituent of the Congress coalition both at the centre and in the state of Maharashtra— had never supported his candidature and on the contrary tried to dissuade him from the contest. Speaking to a news channel today Sangma expressed confidence in getting support from the opposition alliance and added that he was now beyond the NCP and was going to contest the top post only in the interests of over 10 million tribals of India. Incidentally, his daughter Agatha Sangma—the youngest NCP Minister in the ruling coalition—was recently reprimanded by the government for taking part in her father’s poll related meetings. While the NCP reiterates its support for the consensus candidate to be declared by the ruling coalition the same party’s co-founder is found banking on the support of the opposition alliance!

As per reports the ruling coalition is going to announce its Presidential candidate by today evening. Without Mamata now it would definitely look for support from the Samajwadi Party and might or might not approach the opposition alliance for a most sought after consensus. The Congress party has expressed confidence that the coalition candidate is going to be the ultimate winner even with or without opposition support. Sources reveal that chances have increased for the present finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to again emerge as the consensus candidate. Moves from the opposition alliance assume tremendous significance at the moment.

Let the worthy finally win and restore the pride of India!