Ram Nath Kovind to be the next Indian President?
The office of the President should not be part of either the government or the Opposition.
Ram Nath Kovind has been chosen as
presidential candidate by NDA government.
Most appointments to high office are needlessly politicised these days. Presidential
post is no exception. The Opposition
meanwhile has put up another Dalit candidate to counter Kovind.
When KR Narayanan became president much was made of his Dalit credentials.
The NDA is being accused of playing the Dalit card too.
Reasons why PM Modi picked Ram Nath Kovind for the President’s post is
that Kovind is a Dalit from Uttar
Pradesh, and if elected, he will be the second state leader after Modi to land
a top post in the government. He will also become the first leader from Uttar
Pradesh to be appointed President. The party examined a long list of candidates
before zeroing in on Kovind.
By picking Kovind, BJP and the RSS leaders have given a fresh push to
their strategy of integrating Dalits into Hindu society. Nominating a Dalit for
the President’s post also makes it difficult for Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi
to further their own interests in this respect. Another reason was to divide the Opposition
and the last one was to focus on Uttar Pradesh which gave 73 out of 80 Lok
Sabha seats to the BJP in 2014, and propped a saffron government with
two-thirds majority in the 2017 assembly polls.
If the nomination of Ram Nath Kovind as the NDA’s presidential candidate
was a surprise, so was the nomination of Pratibha Patil in 2007.
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