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!
