The vice-presidential election, typically, goes unnoticed at most times, but this year it appears to have taken on a special meaning. The BJP and some of its allies have surcharged the atmosphere with a high-pitched negative campaign for the Rashtrapati’s election, although there is little chance of their candidate succeeding.
This suggests that the principal Opposition party would extend the negativity to the election for vice-president. The electors in this poll are the MPs of both Houses of Parliament, and every effort could be made — from procedural obstructions to political challenges — to mar the chances of sitting vice-president Hamid Ansari, who the ruling UPA has apparently decided to present for re-election.
There is another factor as well. The Left is split on the question of the election of the President, with many in the CPI(M) accusing the party’s leadership of making a serious mistake in backing UPA candidate Pranab Mukherjee as the ruling coalition is seen to be pushing “neo-liberal policies”. In the circumstances, could the CPI(M), which should ordinarily back Mr Ansari’s candidature unhesitatingly (he had been made vice-president in the period of the UPA-1 government on the recommendation of the Left), spring a surprise by voting against the UPA candidate? The logic would be that this time around Mr Ansari is the UPA’s candidate, which he was not in 2007. Such a step could arguably help the CPI(M) win back the affection of some of its rank and file. Should the CPI(M), the largest of the Left parties in Parliament, go against Mr Ansari, it is not unlikely that Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party could do the same. In the presidential election too, the SP came round to backing the UPA candidate only after acting up initially.
Without question, Mr Ansari is a worthy candidate for re-election. He has impressed everyone with his chairmanship of the Rajya Sabha, except the BJP and some of its NDA allies (whose grouse is that on one occasion he did not permit voting after business hours that could have embarrassed the government — which is short of a majority in the Upper House — on the Lokpal issue). Nevertheless, if things get tough for the UPA nominee, it’s on account of the politics of the present. Even parties that go with UPA ordinarily may seek to humble the Congress in the backdrop of the next general election. The NDA has not yet named a candidate, but it could so in order to ideologically demarcate itself from the UPA.