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Meanwhile in Delhi

The BJP is tickled pink by the reception its Goa delegation got at Rashtrapati Bhavan last week. The new President, Pratibha Patil, was warm and gracious and clarified that she bore no grudge against the party for the personalised, vicious campaign it ran against her during the election. Let bygones be bygones, she told the delegation members, according to one report. There were more surprises. She was at pains to stress that she was not the president of any party, but the President of India and would be guided by the Constitution in all her decisions. This was all said in fluent Hindi, for BJP president Rajnath Singh’s benefit. With the party’s Goa chief-minister-in-waiting, Manohar Parrikar, she used Marathi. It was all quite cosy and friendly, definitely not what the BJP expected from a woman it had dismissed as a mere rubber stamp just a few days earlier. Needless to say, the delegation came away impressed.

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Congress circles are a little bemused by the development. The BJP’s afterglow has made them suspicious that the meeting with the President was a political coup of sorts for the opposition. The government had no clue what was happening. Patil took an independent decision to receive the BJP’s Goa MLAs, setting an unusual precedent because Rashtrapati Bhavan does not intervene normally in state assembly disputes. The Congress was embarrassed but there was nothing it could do once the President’s office agreed to the appointment. Is there more to Patil behind that simple granny-next-door look she sports? We may be heading for interesting times as political parties acquaint themselves with the little-known lady from Maharashtra.

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Every ruling party attempts to cast its presidential choice in its own mould. The BJP assigned Pramod Mahajan to supervise Abdul Kalam’s makeover, which ranged from a new hairdo and a new set of clothes to ironing out his scientist eccentricities. In Patil’s case, the Congress took great care that her first public speech as President should send the right signals. The address she delivered after taking the oath of office was drafted and re-drafted by at least four persons, including Sonia Gandhi. The Prime Minister’s media advisor and speech writer, Sanjaya Baru, prepared the basic address. Then, minister of state in the PMO, Prithviraj Chavan, worked on it. Then, it went to the PM who pored over it at night, after a day’s work. And finally, it was handed over to Sonia Gandhi who spent at least two hours scrutinising the draft. She crossed out religious references and refused to allow any mention of Rajiv Gandhi. She also deleted paragraphs that usually find their way into presidential speeches, like relations with Pakistan. Gandhi wisely decided that this first speech by Patil should be a short, crisp, slightly personalised address without obvious imprints of a government preparation.

Tailpiece

Contrary to popular perception, it was not Prithviraj Chavan but CPI leaders D Raja and AB Bardhan who suggested Pratibha Patil’s name. After the left parties flatly refused to endorse Shivraj Patil, Raja suggested that they search for a woman candidate. The list of governors was pulled out and the only woman on it was Pratibha Patil. Bardhan immediately whooped for joy, recalling that they had served a term in the Maharashtra assembly together in the late ’60s. She’s a revolutionary woman, he declared in a yehi-hai-right-choice-baby tone. What could anyone, especially the CPM, say after that?

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net