Veteran politician Margaret Alva, a former Governor and ex-union minister, was chosen by the Opposition as its common candidate for the elections to the post of vice president, on Sunday. She will be up against the National Democratic Alliance's pick Jagdeep Dhankhar, whose name was announced for the polls last evening.
The 80-year-old Alva emerged as the unanimous choice of 17 opposition parties at a meeting of the anti-BJP bloc held at National Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar's residence in the national capital.
Pawar, who announced Alva's candidature after the nearly two-hour-long meeting, said she would file her nomination papers for the vice presidential election on Tuesday, July 19, which incidentally is the last date for filing nominations for the polls.
Accepting the opposition's decision to nominate her, Alva wrote on Twitter: “It is a privilege and an honour to be nominated as the candidate of the joint opposition for the post of Vice President of India. I accept this nomination with great humility and thank the leaders of the opposition for the faith they've put in me.”
Alva has been a five-term Member of Parliament, a minister in the union government who worked under four prime ministers, and Governor of Rajasthan, Goa, Gujarat and Uttarakhand. Belonging to Karnataka, Alva had a stint as a lawyer before she turned to politics. Her entry into politics in 1969 was in a big measure because of the strong political moorings of her in-laws, the Alvas.
One of the most influential figures in the Congress for many years, Alva had a rather uneven relationship with the party leadership towards the fag end of her career as an active politician. In 2008, she was sacked from the Congress Working Committee and the party's Central Election Committee after she had publicly criticised the party's ticket distribution process and alleged that tickets were being sold.
She had later resigned as AICC General Secretary, and the three-page resignation was published in her memoirs 'Courage and Commitment.' The veteran leader attended the Congress' Chintan Shivir held in Udaipur in May.
Today's meeting was attended by Congress' Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI General Secretary D. Raja, Samajwadi Party leader Ramgopal Yadav, Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut, DMK's Tiruchi Shiva, Telangana Rashtra Samithi leader K. Keshava Rao, MDMK's Vaiko, RJD leader A. D. Singh, E.T. Mohammed Basheer of the IUML and Congress(M)'s Jose K. Mani.
With the fissures in the opposition space only too visible in the meeting called by Pawar, with the TMC and the AAP giving it a miss, Pawar said, “We tried to contact West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, but she was busy in some conference. We also tried to contact Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. He announced support for Yashwant Sinha and will announce his support for Margaret Alva too.” Pawar also said that the JMM, which has opted to support the NDA nominee Draupadi Murmu for the president's post, will back Alva in the vice presidential election. The Shiv Sena, which has also broken ranks with the Opposition by declaring support to Murmu, was present in today's meeting, and Raut made it clear afterwards that his party will back Alva's candidature.
There was a marked difference between the opposition's approach in choosing the candidate for the presidential election and that for the vice-president's post. The run-up to the choice of Yashwant Sinha's name as the joint opposition candidate saw a fair amount of enthusiasm among the parties and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee seeking to play the leading role in convening a meeting of the opposition to decide on their pick for the top post. However, while Trinamool chose not to take a similar initiative when it came to choosing a candidate for the vice president's post, the opposition on the whole appeared unenthused. If in the case of the presidential election, the opposition chose not to wait for the government to announce its nominee and went ahead with its declaration, it let the ruling side have the first go in the case of the vice presidential polls.
A major reason for the opposition's lack of enthusiasm for the vice presidential polls could be because the numbers favour the ruling side from the very start. The electoral college for the vice presidential elections comprises members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. Out of the Parliament's current strength of 780, the BJP alone has 394 members, while the majority mark for the polls is 390.
Yechury is learnt to have proposed Alva's name in the meeting, after which the others supported her candidature. Alva's candidature, although the outcome is already a foregone conclusion in favour of the ruling side, is interesting since her mother-in-law Violet Alva was the first woman to preside over the Rajya Sabha. Alva senior was appointed as deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha in 1962. She resigned in 1969 after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had refused to back her for the post of vice president.
The election for the vice president's post is scheduled to be held on August 6. The term of the current Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu ends on August 10.
