Presidential election: By presenting Kovind as its candidate, NDA has put UPA, others in a fix

Reportedly, Amit Shah had said not that long ago that the next President of the republic would not be someone whose name had been in the headlines. The selection of Ram Nath Kovind as the BJP’s presidential nominee was kept a well-guarded secret, in keeping with Narendra Modi’s style of functioning to keep everyone guessing till the last possible moment.

With Kovind for President, the Prime Minister has killed many birds with one stone.  

The person he has selected is from the RSS ranks, so the Sangh cannot take exception to him, though he may not have been their first choice (Murli Manohar Joshi, Ram Naik).  But it is someone with a moderate ‘chehra’, so as to give a reassuring signal to the non-NDA parties whose support the BJP sought to get past the finishing line.

Kovind’s functioning has been low-key, non-controversial, courteous and politically correct, which endeared him to politicians of all hues in Bihar where he was the Governor till Tuesday. It compelled Nitish Kumar, who has enjoyed a comfortable relationship with the Governor, unlike in many other states which have had BJP Governors, to welcome his candidature ‘personally’, though the JD(U)  is, at the time of writing, yet to take a decision on supporting him.

The Kovind gambit is obviously calculated to divide Opposition ranks, and even if the UPA fields its own nominee, the impact of opposition unity that fielding a joint presidential candidate could have generated may now get diluted.  

Two, Kovind is a Dalit, and that has further confused the ranks of the Opposition and will make it difficult for several Opposition parties to oppose him — Mayawati has said as much — unless the UPA also decides to field a Dalit, like Meira Kumar.

Even so, the NDA will have the requisite numbers to get its candidate through, given the support of parties like the BJD, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, and two factions of the AIADMK, even if NDA ally, the Shiv Sena, does not play ball.  

The Dalit factor took precedence over tribal considerations for the Modi-Shah duo. For, at one stage, the BJP was seriously considering opting for a tribal Rashtrapati (like Jharkhand Governor Draupadi Murmu), tribals being another marginalised group the BJP-RSS has been wooing.

The BJP, which had weaned away Dalits to its side in 2014, as also in the 2017 UP polls,  particularly those belonging to the non-Jatav communities, has of late been concerned about the growing restiveness among the Dalits. Particularly after Una, Saharanpur and Rohith Vemula, which antagonised young and educated Dalits. The BJP brass obviously calculated that electing a Dalit First Citizen will help retrieve the situation. Kovind is a Koli, a Mahadalit, a non-Jatav Dalit grouping created by Nitish Kumar when he forged his winning rainbow coalition.

Undoubtedly symbolism has its limitations in politics but the BJP can be expected in the coming months to underscore Kovind’s Dalit antecedents and drive home the point that his beginnings, like Modi’s, were humble. This is part of the transformation the BJP is undergoing under Modi, trying to transit from its Bania-Brahmin base towards  “OBCisation” and “Dalitification” of the party. How the upper castes are going to react to this trend in the coming months and how the BJP is going to manage these contradictions is a separate story.

Then there is Uttar Pradesh, whose importance in the battle of 2019 cannot be emphasised enough. Besides being a Dalit, Kovind is from UP, and that too has its own signal for UPwallahs. Even more so as the Prime Minister too represents UP, elected as he is from Varanasi. UP obviously is going to remain at the heart of the BJP’s political strategy to regain power in 2019.

Hypothetically speaking, if the BJP had not won 71 seats in UP in 2014 but this tally had hovered around 40, which was at the time expected, the BJP would not have notched up the magical figure of 282. It would have been in a minority, running a coalition government at the Centre, possibly buffeted around by allies, as happened during the rule of UPA or NDA I. And the now strongman Modi’s image — and politics — might have been very different in the last three years. Nor would the RSS have been able to pursue its agenda as freely it has been able to do.

Lastly, Kovind is a seasoned politician, with experience of parliamentary functioning, as also of legal affairs having practised in the Supreme Court, all of which should stand him in good stead. Kovind is a good choice. Of course, there could always be better candidates.

The author is a political and social commentator