The office of the president of India is above politics and, therefore, we should keep politics out of it, said both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition led by the Congress Party and both promptly indulged in politics of the worst kind in putting up candidates for the upcoming election to the highest office in the land.
There was much speculation about the “efforts” that the BJP was making in finding a consensus candidate to succeed incumbent Pranab Mukherjee.
In the event it turned out to be an exercise in fooling a gullible opposition into believing that “sincere” energies were being expended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party chief Amit Shah. All they did was constitute a three-man panel comprising Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Defence and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu to talk to various opposition leaders depending on who is amenable to whom.
It was a sham from the word go but the opposition swallowed the bait and met these ministers.
Meanwhile the BJP was busy hunting for ‘Mr. Right’ and in the process even planted the names of some plausible candidates, including Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Jharkhand Governor Draupadi Mormu, the message being the ‘Mr. Right’ could well turn out to be a ‘Ms. Right’.
How do you seek a consensus candidate without revealing who that candidate is? The BJP was trying to do just that. It is possible that in Modi’s postulation, consensus means others agreeing with him, a sort of “my way or the highway” disposition.
Both the Congress and the Left parties did call that bluff but by then it was too late because the BJP was only buying time to look for their man and two days after the ministers met/talked to the opposition, a unilateral announcement came from the ruling dispensation on its choice.
And when it came it surprised quite a few initially but soon it dawned on everyone that the BJP had done a lot of homework to arrive at its decision while the opposition was caught napping.
A 16% rise in vote share in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that brought 40 winners from the Dalit (lower caste Hindus) community into parliament could only mean one thing: the BJP was no longer being seen as a party of upper caste Hindus (Brahmins) and rich traders (Baniyas).
It also signalled the disillusionment of these lower caste communities with parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that had exploited their weakness and poverty only to remember them every time an election came around.
So, to continue to maintain that pro-poor, pro-Dalit theme, it was imperative that the BJP choose one such for the highest office.
‘Metroman’ E Sreedharan was perhaps most deserving of that post, the memory of A P J Abdul Kalam being very fresh in every Indian’s mind, but he is of the “wrong” caste.
So is lawyer Fali Nariman who, though belonging to the minority community, could not be associated with poverty as Parsis are perhaps the most well-to-do Indians as a group.
It was also doubtful if Nariman, a critic of Modi on several fronts, would have accepted the offer if given.
It had to be a Dalit and it had to be one with a political background and, most important of all, with links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Ram Nath Kovind had at times rubbed the BJP the wrong side as governor of Bihar, especially in the selection of vice-chancellors to state universities, but Amit Shah knew him well and whispered in Modi’s ears that he should be the next president. And that was that! The Congress’s feeble attempt to regain lost ground by putting up Meira Kumar, another Dalit, was too little too late.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has succeeded in killing two birds with one stone with his voluntary support of Kovind’s candidature. He had to be seen to be backing a Dalit but more importantly he had to send a message to his ally Lalu Prasad Yadav who is slowly turning out to be an overweight baggage despite his numerical strength in the state assembly. Yadav has termed Kumar’s support of Kovind as a “historical blunder” but Kumar seems to have learned from history faster and now realises that his best chance of staying relevant in present-day Indian politics is to be seen with Modi. His abdication of prime ministerial ambitions following the BJP’s stupendous victory in Uttar Pradesh last March was a clear indication that Kumar has read the situation better than many of the opposition leaders who still find it difficult to reconcile to Modi’s prime ministership.
With all this support, victory for Kovind is a foregone conclusion. Of the 1,098,903 electoral college votes, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has 537,683 votes or 48.8%. With support from Tamil Nadu’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Biju Janata Dal of Odisha, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and YSR Congress Party of Telangana, it will swell to 60-plus percentage. And then there is Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and the Samajwadi Party of UP. Only the victory margin needs to be ascertained.
Judge as culprit throws up many questions
“He will be provided eggs, fish and chicken for any of his three meals in a day. He will have a special bed and will also have a television in his room. Two English language newspapers will be supplied to him daily. And there will be plenty of opportunities to exercise and stay fit.”
If you thought this was going to be the daily routine for a mid-summer holiday at one of the several hill stations in which people from the Indian capital take refuge, you better think again. This was the menu and schedule proposed for former judge of the Calcutta High Court C S Karnan in Kolkata’s Presidency jail where he has been lodged following his arrest from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu last week.
But Karnan was least impressed by these overtures and promptly complained of chest pains the moment he was ushered into his cell and has managed to spend the past few days in a special ward at a government hospital in Kolkata. This is hardly news to ordinary Indians who have seen this tactic being played out every time a politician of any standing is taken into custody.
Amazingly, it took 43 days for the West Bengal police to arrest Karnan after the Supreme Court sentenced him to be jailed for six months for contempt of court.
This was no ordinary fugitive from law but a seasoned judge who had presided over cases of far-reaching importance. And it was for the first time in the history of Indian judiciary that a sitting high court judge was ordered imprisoned.
Apparently Karnan had learned a trick or two from the many culprits he himself had sent to jail. The police team from Kolkata had landed in Chennai on May 10 to arrest Karnan. But he was nowhere to be found. He kept moving from state to state all across south India and also changed his mobile sim card at regular intervals so as to leave as cold a trail as possible. But five days after he officially retired from service he was dramatically picked up from a resort near Coimbatore.
It was a seven-judge bench that had sentenced Karnan but curiously it had nothing to say about the delay in his arrest. In several other instances state police chiefs and chief secretaries had been taken to task by the apex court whenever there was any delay in carrying out its orders.
The delayed arrest allowed Karnan to escape the ignominy of being the first sitting judge of a high court to be put behind bars. May be all of India’s judiciary had heaved a collective sigh of relief when his retirement date came and went without him being arrested for, if it were to happen otherwise, it would have shamed all judiciary to no end.
Which brings us to the question: Is there a guarantee that there won’t be any more future Karnans? Another recently retiring judge of the Rajasthan High Court, while delivering a judgment, observed that peacocks do not mate but peahen reproduce by swallowing the tears of its male counterpart.
There is no doubt that Karnan and justice (retd) Mahesh Chandra Sharma of the Rajasthan High Court are ill-suited for their jobs. And these, by no means, are not alone.
How did they reach such high positions and what sort of justice are such people capable of delivering? The Supreme Court has been steadfast in clinging on to the collegium system of selecting judges to the higher judiciary. The government had tried to offer an alternative but this has been summarily rejected on the ground that it would open up judges’ selection to political interference. That may be a valid reason but either way the ultimate sufferer will be the Indian who goes to court seeking justice.
Delhi diary
