Election

Trying to spin up some froth – putting in the name of PA Sangma as the Presidential candidate

Politics is a very strange game. Just a couple of months back, there was a lot of debate over the political weakness of the UPA Government, and how the Congress is being tormented by its allies. It was unable to pass any major reform due to opposition from some of its allies, and the biggest problem was likely to be that of getting its candidate elected for the President of India. This was compounded by the meetings (usually of some law which the center needed to pass) where the state Chief Ministers used to be present, and most of them would be opposing some law or the other, presenting a united front that seems to portray that power is passing to the states. Now, some of that still remains true, and the allies of the Congress still needle the Congress over issues and over the various laws that the Congress wants to pass. The major reform bills that the Congress would want to pass to portray that there is no paralysis are all in limbo, unable to get clearance from allies, and the Congress does not seem to have the political will or strength to get the allies in line.
However, one major exception to this is the election for President. The Congress sees this as a major point in the political arena and has done all the negotiation with its allies to get the support. The Congress does not have the necessary strength to get the President elected on the basis of their own strength, and needed the support of its allies. And it looks like enough negotiation has gone on to get the required support, with the selection of candidates who are not likely to cause offense to anyone and make it easier to get support from allies and others. And of course, except for Mamta Banerjee, everybody of the others have given the Congress enough ammunition to get pressure piled on them, with the CBI having cases against every leader of the political spectrum (mostly on the basis of disproportionate assets or some kind of scams).
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The race for deciding the contest for President of India: Is it important ?

In some time from now, there will be an election to a post that does not have too much power, but is seen as a very politically significant contest. Every expert in the country agrees that the post of the President of India does not have too much power and have exercised even less power. The role of a President such as Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who signed the proclamation of Emergency (in 1975) that gave incredible powers to Indira Gandhi and took India into a dark alley for the next 2 years was shameful. And we have had Presidents who did not really do much, except to do state visits to countries (where the experts would have also stated that the Indian President has so few powers that it is not really worth it to get into a major discussion over issues). And there have been Presidents such as Abdul Kalam who brought a huge amount of dignity into the office, and who is still remembered, which is something out of the ordinary for Indian Presidents.
After all, the powers of the President as so limited that even if the President declines to approve a Bill passed by Parliament, then they can just re-pass it and then he has no option other than to sign it. Again, the constitution also binds the President to be bound by the advice of the Council of Ministers, which means that the policy of the President is actually the policy of the Government of the day. No Group of Ministers is going to take kindly to a President trying anything independent; which also means that when there have been interventions in state politics through the Governor, it all happens in the name of the President but is actually directed by the Government of India. The only time that the President has real authority is in trying to select the Prime Minister and the winning party after a close election, but even that is illusory now since the numbers count for everything and there is no more independence in that regard.
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Uttar Pradesh elections – some challenges facing Akhilesh Yadav

In the 1984 elections, after the sudden death by assassination of Indira Gandhi, her son became the new Prime Minister and in the polls soon after, he got an astounding number of parliamentary seats giving him a huge majority – with 411 MP’s out of a total possible of 543, this was a huge mandate that he got. However, due to some misguided policies and some wrong steps (opening the locks of the Ram Janambhoomi, the Muslim Personal Law Bill, the huge controversy over the Bofors deal and a group of advisors who did nothing but mis-manage his relations with the country and the media. By the time of the 1989 elections, the support for Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress significantly declined to 197 seats.
The above example just shows that just because a party gets a huge number of seats in a particular election does not mean that this honeymoon will carry over into the next election. In fact, closer home in Uttar Pradesh, the performance of BSP in the 2007 election and then in the recent elections shows how fickle public support can be. Now, with the Samajwadi Party making a huge win in the elections, and then nominating Akhilesh Yadav to be the Chief Minister, the SP can set the ground for continuing this winning way in the future, or crash and burn in the next few years. Here are a few points for the same:
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