Stating the presidential election should not be made a question of identity, but a fight for ideology, Yashwant Sinha urged the electoral college to listen to the voice of their conscience while voting
Opposition parties' Presidential candidate Yashwant Sinha. Pic/PTI
Democracy stands "ruined" in the country as the right to oppose the government is being snatched, Yashwant Sinha, the joint nominee of the opposition parties in the July 18 presidential polls, claimed here on Saturday.
Stating the presidential election should not be made a question of identity, but a fight for ideology, he urged the electoral college to listen to the voice of their conscience while voting.
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Sinha, who was a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet and an MP from Jharkhand's Hazaribag, met JMM executive president and Chief Minister Hemant Soren and sought his party's support in the election. He also met Congress legislators of the state during the day.
"When I started the campaign (for the presidential poll) last month I had said that democracy is in danger. But now when I am concluding the campaign today, I can say that democracy stands ruined in the country".
He said it was all the more evident after the government updated a list making words such as 'ashamed', 'abused', 'betrayed', 'corrupt' and 'jumlajeevi' unparliamentary and prohibited demonstrations inside the Parliament campus.
Sinha alleged that the Centre has been brazenly misusing almost every institution "ED, CBI, Income Tax department, and even the office of the Governor" to create defections in opposition parties and to topple state governments run by them.
This has happened in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and most recently in Maharashtra, he claimed.
"I will not be surprised if similar dirty tactics are employed to destabilise the JMM-Congress government in Jharkhand in the near future," he told a press conference.
On the NDA's Presidential candidate, the former union minister said he has personal regard for Droupadi Murmu, a tribal leader of Odisha.
Sinha said, "But what I wanted to know from the members of the electoral college is that should India have a silent and rubber stamp Rashtrapati? Should India's next President protect the Prime Minister or the Constitution?"
The Presidential election should not be made that of identity but of ideology, he said.
To a question, Sinha said, "The President is a post of dignity. It has limited power. If they (BJP) really want to empower tribals, why don't they make her (Murmu) the Prime Minister of the country?"
Seeking conscience vote from the legislators regardless of their party affiliations, he said that there is no whip in the Presidential election which takes place on the basis of a secret ballot.
"The great makers of the Constitution devised the method of secret ballot to underscore the fact that members of the electoral college should have the freedom to heed the call of their conscience," Sinha said.
The former Union finance minister claimed the Indian economy is grossly mismanaged now.
Sinha who began his campaign from Kerala on June 28 reached Jharkhand after campaigning in various states such as Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Karnataka, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
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