NEW DELHI, 3 July 2007 — Decks were cleared yesterday for a straight contest between Pratibha Patil and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat for the election of president when Lok Sabha Secretary-General P.D.T. Achary rejected nomination papers of all other 72 candidates.
While some of the aspirants for the post of India’s head of state did not attach signatures of at least 50 proposers and as many seconders, others did not deposit 15,000 rupees ($370) at the time of filing the documents, Acharya, who is also the returning officer for the presidential election, said.
Polling will take place on July 19 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and counting will be done on July 21 in Parliament House, Achary said.
But even as Achary threw out the 72 “nonserious” nominations, there was some embarrassment for United Progressive Alliance (UPA) candidate Pratibha as the Supreme Court said it would hear today a public interest litigation challenging her candidacy on grounds that she was in debt to the public exchequer and others.
A vacation bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Tarun Chatterjee and Justice P.K. Balasubramanyan decided to hear the petition seeking cancellation of Pratibha’s nomination paper for the presidential poll for being an “undischarged insolvent” — a person in debt to public exchequer and others.
Simultaneously, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched a fresh offensive against Pratibha by asking her and Shekhawat to declare their assets and state if they faced any criminal cases against them.
BJP sources admitted that it was a last ditch attempt to embarrass Pratibha, who would be the country’s first woman president if she wins the elections, because of the controversy surrounding the collapse of a cooperative bank her family floated in Maharashtra long ago.
Although Pratibha’s victory appears a foregone conclusion as the UPA and its allies command most of the 1.09 million strong electoral college, the NDA’s charges against her have evoked an extraordinary interest in the presidential poll.
The opposition had charged that a sugar cooperative founded by her in the western state of Maharashtra had defaulted in repaying a huge government loan. Pratibha, a veteran Congress politician and until recently the Rajasthan governor, has also been accused of shielding her brother in a 2005 murder case.
Stepping up the offensive against her, a BJP delegation asked the Election Commission to make it mandatory for presidential candidates to declare their assets while filing nomination papers. The delegation, which handed over a detailed letter on the issue written by opposition leader Lal Krishna Advani, demanded that Pratibha should make public her financial assets before her nomination papers are accepted.
Under the Representation of People’s Act, the submission of income/assets details is obligatory only for representatives elected directly, such as Lok Sabha MPs or MLAs. It therefore leaves out those elected indirectly like Rajya Sabha MPs, members of various legislative councils or the president and vice president.
When Achary was asked to comment on the opposition’s demand that Pratibha should disclose her assets in an affidavit, he said: “I have no comment to offer. I go by the law and take decisions in accordance with the law which is in force.” Declining to comment on the petition before the Supreme Court, Achary replied: “I am not aware of it.”
Pratibha has described the charges against her as “malicious and baseless.”
