Electing a president politics around picking bjp opposition nominees will be kind of a dress rehearsal for 2024

Electing a president politics around picking bjp opposition nominees will be kind of a dress rehearsal for 2024

Rajya Sabha polls and results are today. But yesterday, with EC announcing the schedule for electing the republic’s next president, the stage is set for interesting politics. BJP-led NDA is just short of the 50% threshold in the electoral college (all MLAs, MPs vote, and each vote has a value, with bigger states’ votes being more valuable, all MPs’ votes have equal value). This time, of course, J&K, which has no assembly as of now, won’t have MLA votes, and the electoral college will be marginally smaller. If parties like BJD and YSR Congress vote with NDA, it’s odds-on that the governing party at the Centre should be able to get its nominee elected. But that doesn’t make the July 18 contest insipid.

Who BJP’s leadership picks as its nominee will be a study in the party’s political strategy. Picking Ram Nath Kovind in 2017 was a Dalit outreach. There are social groups and regions that need BJP’s attention. They will be possible factors in the decision. Also, interesting is whether NDA allies, JD(U) and AIADMK, will need cosseting, and whether YSR Congress and BJD will become targets of Opposition wooing. Perhaps, the Opposition game will be even more interesting. A weakened Congress’s word may not be the most important one in picking a combined Opposition candidate – a reality Nehru-Gandhis may have to accept. KCR has been leading Opposition efforts on this so far. But there’s Mamata, Pawar, Stalin and Kejriwal. This may turn out to be a dress rehearsal for 2024 Opposition efforts.

Kovind will demit office after an uneventful tenure, unsurprising since he was the nominee of a party whose hold at the Centre is unchallenged. Presidencies usually become potentially interesting when the Rashtrapati comes from a political stable different from that of the governing party or combine. That’s why KR Narayanan’s term, when it coincided with part of Vajpayee’s PMship, had its moments, as did Pranab Mukherjee’s during part of Modi’s first stint as PM. Pratibha Patil’s term during Congress-led UPA was as smooth as Kovind’s. The two exceptions are Abdul Kalam, who managed to turn a staid office to a popular one by dint of his charisma and energy, and Zail Singh, who, despite being a Congressman while in politics, created anxious moments for Rajiv Gandhi.

But even when quiet, the President’s office remains important, because it potentially is an institution of appeal in a hotly contested federal system. The incoming president will be in office when 2024 polls happen – and depending on how those results pan out, the republic’s first office may become interesting.