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Magazine
Race for the Presidency
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A bird's-eye view of the past Presidential elections reveals why the seemingly simple exercise gets enveloped in a round of confusion, intrigue, politicking and bad blood. INDER MALHOTRA on the past Presidential polls as against the present contest.
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COME July 25 and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam will be shifting house from his single-room abode in a college hostel in Chennai to Rashtrapati Bhavan, the magnificent residence of the Head of State on New Delhi's Raisina Hill. On this score there is complete certainty in a world chock-full of uncertainties. The overwhelming support for Dr. Kalam in the Electoral College became obvious after the principal opposition party, the Congress (I) rather belatedly, and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, with lightning speed, endorsed his candidature, announced earlier by the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The unprecedented presence of both the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, together with such stalwarts as Chandrababu Naidu, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, at the filing of his nomination papers by the distinguished defence scientist underscored it dramatically.
Consequently, the contest between Dr. Kalam and Captain Lakshmi Sehgal, heroine of the Indian National Army, headed by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, in the 1940s and now the Presidential candidate of the rather isolated Left parties, would be no more than symbolic. This would also be entirely in keeping with the established pattern so far though she is likely to get far fewer votes than Justice K. Subba Rao got while contesting Zakir Husain or Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer did when pitted against R. Venkataraman.
Some have criticised the two Communist parties and their allies for not joining the consensus on Dr. Kalam but deciding to oppose him and force a contest. This is unfair. Why should the world's largest democracy be shy of a contest that is the lifeblood of the democratic process? However, the Left Front is vulnerable to criticism for some of the arguments it is using to justify its opposition to Dr. Kalam.
The most specious, strange and demonstrably false is the argument that Dr. Kalam, being a nuclear scientist with a leading role in the 1998 nuclear tests, should not have been elevated to the Presidency, especially at a time of acute crisis in India-Pakistan relations. The consensus candidate for Rashtrapati Bhavan is an outstanding missile technologist, indeed this country's "missile man". In the realm of space, his achievements include the launching of the SLV-3 rocket and the Rohini satellite. But he is not a nuclear scientist. This has been made clear time and again. And yet the apparently motivated propaganda, depicting him as the architect of the Indian nuclear weapon programme, persists.
The Left Front's second argument, that Dr. Kalam "lacks political experience" and has insufficient knowledge of constitutional intricacies, cannot be dismissed out of hand. But he has himself answered it by pointing out that his "close association with six successive Prime Ministers" has given him "sufficient political experience". Moreover, as he says, he would learn on the job. A person of his high calibre and lofty background can also be expected to comprehend the constitutional issues, especially with the help of the expert advice always available to the President.
Finally, the Left Front's bland declaration, that Dr. Kalam is the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) candidate and, therefore, must be opposed, economises on the truth. That the BJP is the core of the NDA, the sponsor of Dr. Kalam's candidature, is incontestable. But the BJP did not pick on him. It was hell-bent on nominating the Maharashtra Governor, P.C. Alexander. So much so that the BJP hardliners forced the Prime Minister to withdraw his earlier proposal, conveyed to the Congress (I), that the Vice-President, Krishan Kant, should be the consensus candidate. Mr. Naidu, the redoubtable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh was primarily responsible for making the BJP "dump" Dr. Alexander and plump for Dr. Kalam.
Much of the confusion, bickering, contention and bad blood during the messy manoeuvring that preceded Dr. Kalam's emergence as an unstoppable candidate stemmed from the fact that in one important respect the current Presidential poll differs from all the 11 such elections held in the past. This is the first time the country is electing its President when the ruling combination and the forces opposed to it are roughly balanced, with the NDA having a slight edge in the Electoral College. This had initially misled the BJP hardliners into believing that their candidate, whoever he or she might be, would necessarily win. Only after a defiant Mr. Naidu refused to countenance the BJP's preference for Dr. Alexander was the illusion shattered.
All the previous Presidential polls took place in the era of single-party dominance, with the Congress (I) ruling the roost on 10 occasions and the short-lived Janata doing so only in 1977 when N. Sanjiva Reddy was elected totally uncontested. This was the only time when none of the frivolous candidates, who had made it their business to contest every Presidential poll only to lose their deposits, chose to jump into the fray. Even a bird's-eye view of these elections would be instructive, if only because it reveals why, more often than not the seemingly simple race for Rashtrapati Bhavan gets enveloped in a miasma of low intrigue and petty politicking.
In 1952, hardly anyone was thinking of the Presidential election when the Congress Working Committee, meeting in Kolkata, passed a resolution "requesting" Rajendra Prasad and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to agree to be the party's candidates for the posts of President and Vice-President respectively. That was the end of the matter. But five years later, events took an unexpected turn. Jawaharlal Nehru did not want to give Rajendra Prasad, with whom he had a lot of differences, a second term. He wanted Radhakrishnan to move from the Vice-President's House to Rashtrapati Bhavan instead. But his senior colleagues in the Congress Parliamentary Board, Maulana Azad in particular, thought otherwise. They had little difficulty in overruling the Prime Minister and giving Prasad a second term. Nehru was unhappy. "What weight do I carry with the Parliamentary Board?" he asked ruefully. But being a firm respecter of the majority opinion and being sure of his position in the Congress and the country, he withdrew his objection to Prasad. Twelve years later when his daughter, Indira Gandhi, was similarly outvoted over the choice of the party's Presidential candidate, her reaction was violently different. But let that be discussed in proper sequence. The Presidential election in 1962 was the last in Nehru's lifetime. Azad was dead by then. Radhakrishnan's candidature went through like a hot knife through butter; as did Zakir Husain's choice as Vice-President.
Here the chronology needs to be interrupted briefly to focus on the rather intriguing issue of "no second term for the President". That Prasad has so far been the only President to serve for two terms is an indisputable fact. But it is one of those facts that obscure the truth. I know of no President who did not want a second term. Only a few of them kept this aspiration to themselves. Others did not hesitate to lobby for a renewal of their tenancy of what H.Y. Sharada Prasad calls the "Big House". Some did so covertly, others overtly and, in one case at least, crudely. None succeeded. Even so, it does not follow that there is a firm convention that the President must serve one term and no more. Interestingly, there has been only one occasion so far when Parliament has discussed this matter. On August 17, 1961 some members of the Rajya Sabha — reportedly apprehending that Prasad might try for a third term — introduced a Bill to restrict the President's tenure to "two terms only". Nehru secured the Bill's withdrawal by arguing that such a limit could best be secured by a "clear and strict" convention.
Ironically, this issue became live again in 1967 when Radhakrishnan's first term was coming to an end. By this time, Indira Gandhi was at odds with the "Syndicate" of powerful regional Congress leaders that had masterminded her ascension to the office of Prime Minister. The "Syndicate" headed by K. Kamaraj, for its part, had made common cause with its bete noire and Indira's rival Morarji Desai. It was in this tense atmosphere that Kamaraj suggested a second term for Radhakrishnan. Indira refused, sarcastically asking Kamaraj and his cohorts, "what answer will you give when people ask why Zakir Sahib wasn't elevated to the Presidency?" She had her way and Zakir Husain was elected comfortably.
It was Husain's death in the summer of 1969 that enabled the "Syndicate" and Desai to use their majority in the Parliamentary Board to foist on Indira the nomination of Sanjiva Reddy as the party's Presidential candidate. Though furious, she acquiesced at first and even signed Reddy's nomination paper. But she soon reneged on this and endorsed the candidature of V.V. Giri who had filed his nomination as an independent candidate, protesting that since he already was Vice-President the Congress should never have overlooked his claim. The no-holds-barred Giri versus Reddy contest, with all the attendant drama, contention, passion and tumult, followed. It was really the power struggle within the Congress playing itself out on the national stage.
With the help of second preference votes, Giri won. The margin of his victory was very narrow. But in love, war and Indian elections, the winner takes all. Indira used Giri's victory and concomitant euphoria to establish her supremacy first in her party and then, after the 1971 General Election in the country. After India's glorious triumph in the war for the liberation of Bangladesh, she became a combination of goddess Durga and Empress of India. From this Olympian height she had nowhere to go but down. However, no one could have foreseen that her fall would be so spectacular and shattering. Thanks to her Himalayan Blunder of imposing the Emergency in the mid-1970s, the voters threw her out of power humiliatingly in March 1977. A Presidential election was already overdue because Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, elected in 1974, had died in the meantime. The Janata Party — despite its inherent fragility that took some time to become manifest — was in command.
The main point about Reddy's eventual arrival in Rashtrapati Bhavan was not his unopposed election but the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai's abortive attempt to ditch him and elect instead the eminent exponent of classical dance, Rukmini Arundale! Reddy was understandably infuriated; other senior Janata leaders were also appalled. Desai was stopped in his tracks.
Herein perhaps lies the heart of the matter. Indira Gandhi may have been the first Prime Minister to start installing in Rashtrapati Bhavan innocuous individuals who would also be pliable but she was by no means the last to want to do so. Her mindset persists, as the recent shenanigans showed. The trouble, however, is — and was even in her time — that once an apparently pliable person reaches the exalted office, things tend to change. The Beckett syndrome comes into play or some other factors intervene. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed did sign the Emergency proclamation on the dotted line without any qualm or hesitation. But he had begun to protest against such incidents as the firing at Turkman Gate during Sanjay Gandhi's heyday.
More telling is the case of Giani Zail Singh. He began his tenure with the declaration that if "Indiraji so wanted," he would "happily pick up the broom and sweep the floor". After her assassination he swore in Rajiv Gandhi as her successor rather hastily and by departing somewhat from established procedures. But once Rajiv started treating him with scant respect, Gianiji drove him round the bend by launching against him a war of nerves of extraordinary ferocity. Despite his four-fifths majority in the Lok Sabha, and perhaps because of the Bofors allegations, Rajiv lived in constant dread of a Presidential proclamation dismissing him and dissolving the House. He heaved a sigh of relief only when Zail Singh's term was over on July 24, 1987.
One final word on the subject. When did you last hear the expression "rubber stamp", an epithet once routinely used for successive presidents in this country? Since the dawn of the coalition era, it has disappeared from Indian political parlance.
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