President sahiba for India?(INDIA)

Who is Pratibha Patil, and how is it that she is likely to become India's first woman president? Sonia Gandhi's 14 June announcement of Pratibha Patil's nomination had journalists scurrying to unearth some background on the worthy candidate; but no laudatory past arose, nor any skeleton in the closet. Evidently, she is just a potential 'common minimum candidate' to support the common minimum programme of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Here is a candidate who cannot be accused of being "soft on saffron", as was the criticism by the left parties against the candidature of Shivraj Patil, current home minister and Sonia Gandhi's first choice as presidential nominee. The left also rejected the nomination of Karan Singh for his 'royal' background. Gandhi claimed that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, one of the early names thrown up and an acceptable candidate for the left, could not be "spared" from his current position.

It is telling that the Congress party appears not to wield sufficient clout with its current alliance partners, and subsequently had to bear the ignominy of two of its high-profile potential nominees – Singh and Home Minister Patil – being rejected by the left. This has also been a contest signifying an era of coalition politics, and the considerable role played by regional parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Dravida Munetra Kazhagam, in tilting the votes. This has also been occasion for unprecedented public wrangling played out in front of television cameras, and the subject of SMS polls – rather unseemly for an office that has been occupied in the past by such dignified statesmen and philosophers as Rajendra Prasad, S Radhakrishnan and K R Narayanan.