NEW DELHI, June 20: The combined opposition will have to start from a scratch to look for a consensus candidate at their proposed meeting in Mumbai on Tuesday after the former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, turned down their offer to contest the presidential election as their candidate.
A day ahead of the combined opposition meeting, Gandhi on Monday became the third person to decline to be the opposition candidate for the presidential elections after the veteran politician and the Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar and the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and the National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah turned down the offer last week. Abdullah and Gandhi’s names were proposed by the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee after Pawar withdrew his name at the first meeting of the opposition parties held in Delhi last week.
In a statement issued Monday, Gandhi said: “Having considered the matter deeply I see that the Opposition’s candidate should be one who will generate a national consensus and a national atmosphere beside Opposition unity. I feel there will be others who will do this far better than I.
May India get a President worthy of the office presaged by Rajaji as the last Governor General and inaugurated by Dr Rajendra Prasad as our first President.”
Even in 2017, the Opposition camp had wanted to field the 77-year old Gandhi, a former diplomat, as its Presidential candidate, but the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) decision to pick Ram Nath Kovind as its face had forced a rethink. Eventually, the Opposition fielded former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar, also a Dalit like Kovind, but she lost. A former bureaucrat, Gandhi had also served as India’s High Commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka.
The process to find a successor to Kovind, whose term ends next month, began on June 15. The last date for filing of nominations is June 29. The polls, if necessary, will be held on July 18 and the counting on July 21.
(Manas Dasgupta)