Regional parties discuss presidential candidate

Some important regional parties are getting together to forward a name for the President of India that, they calculate, will be impossible to ignore.

Visualised as pressure tactics that will force the two mainstream parties, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, to acknowledge that the candidate for President of India needs the backing of smaller regional forces, the prime movers of this initiative are Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa and Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik.

Jayalalithaa is coming to Delhi on May 4 May, a day before the May 5 chief ministers’ meeting on the National Counter Terrorism Centre. She is likely to meet leaders of the Samajwadi Party, which supports the ruling UPA, and members of the opposition NDA such as the Janata Dal (U).

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former governor of West Bengal, had a luncheon meeting with Patnaik yesterday. National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) minister Agatha Sangma also met Patnaik in Bhubaneswar. Top NCP leaders say the logical choice for president should be Hamid Ansari, currently the Vice President. But they also say they would not like to let go of a chance to leverage the election to improve their political prospects.

Although NCP head Sharad Pawar called on Congress president Sonia Gandhi today, top government sources said it was unlikely the ruling alliance would open its cards until the Parliament session was over.

“The Finance Bill is yet to be passed. The choice of candidate for President of India cannot become a way to armtwist or blackmail the government on the passage of the Bill,” these sources said.

Sonia Gandhi has not revealed her mind to even party confidants on the matter, although close advisors have met her several times recently.