Did you know the race for Raisina Hill ever had a candidate by the nickname Dharti Pakad (One who clings) or are you aware of the highest number of candidates ever to vie for the position? Read on...
By Francis Adams
As nominated
members of the Rajya Sabha, cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and Bollywood actor
Rekha may be glad they don't have the right to vote for the 14th Presidential
election considering the bizarre and funny development each day over the
growing list of candidates for the highest elective office in the country.
Although the Congress party has silenced speculation by announcing Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as their candidate much ahead of the June 30 deadline, the names of candidates initially began with rumours of Defence Minister A K Antony and Mukherjee being in the fray, which grew by the day to include home minister P Chidambaram, external affairs minister S M Krishna (reportedly because he is from Karnataka - the only southern state not to have seen a native becoming president), former governor of the Reserve Bank of India C Rangarajan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Dr. Karan Singh, Mohsina Kidwai (the only woman among the names floated around), former president APJ Abdul Kalam, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Shivraj Patil, Ram Jethmalani, Gopal Gandhi, Somnath Chatterjee and P A Sangma.
The battle of wits and chess-like strategies continued to make headlines with the latest one being the confusion within the NDA over their preferred choice Sangma aside from the public statement made by Kalam that his conscience did not permit him to contest for the position for another term. Funny as the developments may sound such scenarios are not new to the race for the President’s post or for Raisina Hill, as it has been christened lately.
The fourth Presidential election, in 1967, saw 17 candidates contesting for the chair vacated by Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, whose term expired on 12th, May, that year. Dr Zakir Hussain was declared elected as President on 9th, May.
It was this term that saw several changes incorporated for electing the head of the state, one among them described as “innovative” by the Election Commission of India. Dr Zakir Hussain passed away suddenly on 3rd, May, 1969. And although, under article 65 (1) of the Constitution, V V Giri, the Vice-President assumed office as the acting president, he resigned from his position as well as acting president on 20, July, 1969, necessitating an election that saw 15 candidates standing for the position.
The ECI says that no candidate among the 15 secured the required quota of 4, 18,169 votes in the first count. “Candidate after candidate was excluded till only two candidates, namely, Shri V V Giri (with 4, 20, 077 votes) and Shri N Sanjeeva Reddy (with 4, 05, 427 votes) remained in the field. Shri V. V. Giri who secured the quota was declared elected by the Returning Officer on 20.08.1969 and the newly elected President assumed office on 24-08-1969,” says the ECI.
As for the innovation, the ECI says that to ensure strict secrecy of voting “the serial numbers on the back of the ballot papers were covered with coloured slips of paper pasted at the four corners.”
That was not all. The ballot papers were then shuffled several times during polling, like you shuffle numbered coins in a game of Housie, to flummox “agents of the candidates” from noting down the serial numbers in their efforts to identify the number of votes cast by members during counting.
Interestingly, Wikipedia (many doubt its level of accuracy) says that Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy was, incidentally, nominated as the official candidate of the Congress party, the same way the party has announced Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature for the current Presidential election.
Wikipedia says that for the sake of transparency, Reddy resigned from the Lok Sabha Speaker’s position he was holding even before the Presidential election had begun (Pranabda is yet to relinquish his chair as Finance Minister). However, says the free encyclopedia, “Indira Gandhi [the then Prime Minister], knowing that Sanjiva Reddy was too independent a person to toe her line, took the stance of allowing the party electors to vote according to their conscience, rather than asking to vote for the party candidate. This actually implied her support to V. V. Giri.”
Having lost the election, Sanjiva Reddy is reported to have retired from active politics and returned to his native village Illluru in Andhra Pradesh to take up farming.
It was also the 1969 election that saw the end of Chowdhry Hari Ram’s tryst with becoming President. No detail is available in the public domain, not even on Wikipedia about Hari Ram, whose only claim to fame seems to be that he contested five elections, starting from the very first in 1952 against Dr Rajendra Prasad.
Besides being listed as Chowdhry Hari Ram, his name is also listed as Ch. Hari Ram and Shri Hari Ram by the ECI. Hari Ram’s determination in becoming the President seemed very strong. He did not gain a single vote when he contested in 1967 against Dr Zakir Hussain. He stood again, in his final attempt in 1969, against V. V. Giri and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy and garnered 125 votes.
There was more drama waiting to happen during the 1969 election. “For the first time in suitable cases, some MLAs were allowed to cast their votes at Parliament House in New Delhi instead of their State Capitals, “ says the ECI.
After the polling, it was the Election Commission’s turn to take the flak for allowing a gap of four days between the polling date and the date of counting the votes. In its defence, the ECI says that there were several reasons behind the delay. “First, there were numerous postal ballot papers for electors who were under preventive detention. They were detained at outlying stations and the Commission wanted to ensure that they had sufficient time to send their votes to reach the Returning officer before counting.”
The other reason cited by the ECI is inclement weather that hampered shipping the polled ballot boxes from the North Eastern states including Nagaland and Assam. The Commission says that flights at that time were either delayed or cancelled and officials were working round the clock, checking the status of the weather with the meteorological department.
“Ultimately, the ballot boxes had to be carried from Guwahati by the army courier plane under special escorts. All previous Presidential elections [in 1952, 1957, 1962, and 1967] were held in the first half of May when the weather was in good condition and in 1969, for the first time, the election was to be held in August,” says the ECI.
More drama ensued. Agents of the candidates, from various state capitals, were allowed by the Commission to fly in the plane carrying the polled ballot boxes, that is, after it had strictly directed the Civil Aviation authorities to ensure that the respective Assistant Returning Officers kept the sealed ballot boxes close by their side until the time the plane landed in New Delhi.
The Commission had additional criticism coming its way, to which it dealt with firmly, thanks to the ignorance of the critics.
“Another criticism was that the votes should have been counted at the State Capitals themselves instead of being brought to Delhi. These critics were not aware that in the proportional representation by single transferable system of voting, counting cannot be done in piecemeal at different places to arrive at decisive result,” says the ECI.
Wiser after all the drama and criticism it experienced from the previous election, the ECI decided to take some bold, corrective measures for the election in 1974. “The experience of the five elections to the office of President held earlier in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967 and 1969 revealed that some persons offered themselves as candidates for the office of the President without even a remote chance of getting elected. Another matter of concern was the light-hearted manner in which persons resorted to a court of law for challenging the election to the office of the President. In order to remedy these shortcomings, the Government, on the recommendations of the Commission, got an Act passed by Parliament on 23-03-1974 amending the Presidential and VicePresidential Act, 1952,” says the ECI.
Thus, a new set of rules were formulated, among them the nomination paper of a Presidential candidate that was required to be backed (subscribed) by at least 10 electors as proposers and an equal number as seconders.
The stringent measures adopted by the Commission helped a smooth election in 1974, also for the fact that for the first time the race featured only two candidates, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Tridip Chaudhuri. Ahmed won a whopping 7, 65, 587 votes while Chaudhuri managed to attract 1, 89, 196.
Drama reared its head back again, in 1977. The sudden passing away of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, the fifth President of India, on 11th February 1977 meant fresh election required to be held to elect a new President.
B D Jatti, who was the Vice President took over as acting President. A fresh Presidential election could not be conducted immediately because the Lok Sabha election, that had already begun on 10th February ended on 13th May, that year. “General elections to constitute new Legislative Assemblies
of 11 States were completed only in June-July, 1977,” says the ECI.
The polling date for the Presidential election was scheduled for 6th August, 1977 and the last date for withdrawal of nomination was 21st July. On that day, after 3pm the Returning officer declared Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, who was back in the fray, elected unopposed. This was done under section 8 (1) of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Elections Act, 1952 – the first time any candidate was elected to the country’s highest elective office without a contest.
Reason? “In all 37 candidates filed their nominations. On scrutiny, the Returning Officer rejected the nominations filed by 36 candidates. Thus only one validly nominated candidate remained in the field, namely, Shri Neelam Sanjiva Reddy. Neither the preparation nor publication of the list of contesting candidates for taking the poll therefore became necessary,” says the ECI.
The 1982 election progressed without a hiccup and saw Giani Zail Singh become the seventh President of India after winning 7, 54, 113 votes to his only rival in the contest H R Khanna’s 2, 82, 685.
Then came the 1987 election that witnessed court ruling, both the High Court as well as the Supreme Court, over the eligibility of disqualified candidates to vote. (See pages 32 to 35 of this document: http://bit.ly/MLzxvU ).
Kaka Joginder apparently earned the sobriquet Dharti-Pakad (in this case, meaning “one who clings”) because, says Wikipedia that “His nomination papers were usually disregarded by the election commission and he earned the nickname [Dharti Pakad (one who clings)] after several unsuccessful runs for the President of India. The most prolific year for him was during the 1992 10th Presidential elections where he earned fourth place in the polling with 1135 votes, losing to Shankar Dayal Sharma. He also tried elections from 14 states of India in the 1990s, mostly for state assemblies.”
Kaka’s election promises included bringing back the barter system as a solution to guide the Indian economy on a prosperous path. Wish to know more about Kaka? See: (http://bit.ly/NRogkw ).
Despite the confidence in the current ECI, one wondered what happens when several seats in the Electoral College are vacant during polling. Who substitutes for these seats?
A prompt email response from the Election Commission of India answered the query. “If any seats are vacant in the electoral college for the presidential election, the same do not effect the overall composition of that electoral college and the total number of MPs (776) and MLAs (4120) in the College remains the same. The value of their votes also does not change because of any vacancy in the electoral college. Your attention in this context is invited to Article 71(4) of the Constitution and the decision of the Supreme Court in Re Presidential Election, 1974 (AIR 1974 SC 1682),” responded S.K. Mendiratta, Legal Advisor at the Election Commission of India. He was replying on behalf of the V.S. Sampath, Chief Election Commissioner of India.
No comments:
Post a Comment