Former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno A. Sangma’s name has suddenly cropped up for President. Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa appears to be the main promoter. Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik has lent strong support. However, Mr Sangma’s own outfit, the Nationalist Congress Party, which is a part of the ruling UPA, is still in the dark. This would indicate that Mr Sangma has offered himself to be a stalking horse for a section of the Opposition.
If politics were not in consideration, the former Speaker should be a good choice. Mr Sangma is still remembered as a good presiding officer in Parliament. The other two names doing the rounds for President — finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and vice-president Hamid Ansari — are also first-rate. We are fortunate in that. But since electing the President is all about politics, it is safe to say that the floating of Mr Sangma’s name could be just the lifeline that the BJP needed. It had made the silly mistake of throwing up former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s name without consulting its allies, and this had deeply upset Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), a key NDA partner.
With his eminence, Mr Sangma did not have to be presented as a candidate from the Scheduled Tribes or the Christian category, which are yet to give us a President. Why Ms Jayalalithaa did so is not clear. Jagjivan Ram had said he was an Indian leader, not a Scheduled Caste leader when someone had tried to foist that on him.