Opposition trying for a strong Dalit Candidate against NDA’s Kovind

While the Janata Dal (United) has expressed willingness to support the candidature of former Bihar governor Ram Nath Kovind for the post of India’s  president, the Left parties and the Congress still appear well on course to field a candidate to oppose the Dalit lawyer-politician as they see in him a man with an Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) background.

“It is for the first time that the Governor of Bihar has been chosen for the post of President. We are all supporting him, the Chief Minister is supporting him, it’s good for Bihar,” said Ratnesh Sada, a leader from Nitish Kumar’s JD(U).

The opposition parties believe that the manner in which the BJP kept Kovind’s name a secret till it was finally announced was against the spirit of developing a consensus on naming a presidential candidate. The parties are now learnt to be veering towards fielding a strong Dalit candidate of their own to take on BJP’s Kovind.Even as the numbers seem to be stacking in favour of the BJP candidate, who has thus far received support from the Biju Janata Dal, Lok Janshakti Party, Shiv Sena, Telangana Rashtra Samiti, YSR Congress, Telugu Desam Party, AIADMK, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the JD(U), the Left parties are keen on putting up a fight as they do not want to support a candidate with an RSS background.

On June 19 itself, soon after Kovind’s name was announced by BJP president Amit Shah, both the CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI general secretary  S. Sudhakar Reddy had declared the need for  the opposition parties to oppose his candidature. That a fight is definitely on the cards became clear  when Kerala chief minister Pinaravi Vijayan said that that Kovind was a “political candidate” and therefore “his candidature will be faced politically.”

The names of Meira Kumar, the former Lok Sabha speaker; Sushil Kumar Shinde  former union home minister of Congress and of Prakash Yashwant Ambedkar, B.R. Ambedkar’s grandson and leader of Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh, are being reported in media from India  to be among those which have been suggested. Somewhere the belief is that by fielding a strong Dalit candidate who has greater acceptability, the opposition would be able to put up a better fight, particularly so because in the presidential polls the parties cannot issue any whip and all the legislators and parliamentarians are free to exercise their vote as per their conscience.