Aditya Sinha: Congress can't even pick its battles

PM Narendra Modi and VicePresident Hamid Ansari before the GST rollout on Friday Ansari knows hersquos not going to be nominated to a third term by Modi PicPTIThere is no more bankrupt an idea than that of nominating Meira Kumar as the nearlycombined Opposition candidate to be Indias 14th President Given the BJPs numbers in the electoral college and the support promised by the ruling parties of three important states in the South there was no chance of an Opposition candidate winning even if it had been an as outofthebox a candidate as the late APJ Abdul Kalam and no such candidate would anyway have participated in a losing contest The raison detre of Ms Kumars candidacy is that the main Opposition party the Congress wants a symbolic fight against ruling party candidate and Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind As Kovind is a Dalit the Congress put up a token Dalit of its ownPartymen were at pains to point to Ms Kumars credentials as a former diplomat former minister and former Lok Sabha Speaker It is a lame argument Ms Kumar inherited the political legacy of her father Babu Jagjivan Ram He was a recognised Dalit leader in the Congress On her own she is an elitist and has zero idea of the modern Dalit experience She is a political lightweight unable to win an election in Bihar unless the nonCongress parties allow it Nothing in the Parliamentary record distinguishes her as an epochal Speaker Even Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was unpersuaded by the candidacy of this nonresident Bihari Personally she is an early landgrabber in Lutyens Delhi squatting in the house allotted to her father and posing it as an unofficial memorial The only way this sham will end is if BSP chief Mayawati becomes prime minister and throws Ms Kumar out Indeed if the Opposition wanted a genuine Dalit for the presidency then it ought to have consulted Mayawati she herself obviously would not be interested in a retirement jobThe Congress need not have contested this election It could have offered the ruling BJP a return to a convention of earlier times wherein the ruling party chose the President and the opposition selected a vicepresident after quiet consultations Its likely however that the cussed leadership of the BJP would have told the Congress to take a hike There is also the chance nonetheless that it would have liked a consensus for the presidential poll After all the presidency was a grand prize it was seeking And the BJP better than anyone else knows that a vicepresident need not be elevated to Rashtrapati Bhawan once hisher term is over Even a liberal PM like AB Vajpayee led VicePresident Krishan Kant up the garden path in 2002 by first privately promising him the presidency only to snatch it away at the last moment by proposing Kalams name Krishan Kant died a few months later of a broken heartThe Congress pulled a similar stunt in 2012 when it denied a promotion to VicePresident Hamid Ansari and instead nominated Pranab Mukherjee to the post Mukherjee essentially endgamed Congress chief Sonia Gandhi into proposing his name overruling West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees objections It was a murky entry to Rashtrapati Bhawan by the quintessential Congress troubleshooter who had shrewdly foreseen the rise of then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi and decided hed better secure himself a sinecure Hamid Ansari was far better suited for the job than Mukherjee who in the 1980s was infamous for two things for being Indira Gandhis hatchetman with regard to turmoil in several border states including Assam Punjab and JampK and for being finance minister at a time that Dhirubhai Ambanis Reliance made incredible strides in polyester fibre yarn import thanks to rules that were oddly suspended and reinstated to suit Reliance If such a backroom boy can become President of India then something is broken in our politicsIt would have been fair to elevate the former diplomat and a man with a fullterms experience as vicepresident and now Hamid Ansari has two full terms under his belt He is a secular Indian upholding the ideals of the Republics founding parents He is an eloquent vicepresident unrattled by this governments boorishness Ansari knows hes not going to be nominated to a third term by Modi And if the Congress was interested in an authentic symbolic contest not a pseudoidentity one then it should have nominated Ansari mdash he would have had the support of the communists as well as large chunks of the Opposition Even Nitish would have had to think thrice before preemptively announcing his support to Governor KovindA battle between Kovind and Ansari might have transcended the identity contest that the Congress has already flubbed It would have been the actual ideological battle that Ms Kumar has spoken of The Congress might have won even in defeat But it cant even properly fight that war these daysAditya Sinhas crime novel The CEO Who Lost His Head is available now He tweets autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom