Proxy war in NDA as Alexander lobby tests PM’s line of control

Atal Behari Vajpayee is all for a consensus on who the next President should be, read Krishan Kant. But for the first time ever, the Prime M...

Atal Behari Vajpayee is all for a consensus on who the next President should be, read Krishan Kant. But for the first time ever, the Prime Minister may not have the last word on who walks into Rashtrapati Bhavan in July.

The meeting of the NDA called this evening to finalise the candidate was deferred to Sunday because of sharp differences within the BJP and the NDA on whether the next President should be Kant or P C Alexander via a contest.

After his return from Almaty, the PM had conveyed to four of his senior colleagues, L K Advani, George Fernandes, Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan, that the President should be selected by a consensus given the stand-off with Pakistan and the need to present a united face.

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They all agreed until an hour before today’s meeting when they plugged for Alexander. This was embarrassing for Vajpayee given that an hour earlier, he had asked Brajesh Mishra to talk to the Congress and firm up Kant’s candidature. Mishra talked to Natwar Singh, who has been acting as a go-between with the Government on behalf of his party, and the Congress is believed to have given its go ahead to the name once again.

But at the meeting, Fernandes is believed to have led the attack against Kant, saying he was not acceptable to the NDA allies and was favoured by the Third Front. Advani, Jaswant Singh and Mahajan put their weight behind Alexander.

The PM’s emissaries were apologising profusely to the Congress leaders, saying that the Vajpayee plan had gone for a six. The Congress called an meeting tonight with its leaders privately questioning what was left of the sanctity of the PM’s word.

The buzz in the BJP is that the elevation of Alexander, a Christian, would prevent Sonia Gandhi from coming to power. For it would make it easy to initiate a ‘‘whisper campaign’’ during the next Lok Sabha elections that the country’s top two positions could not go to Christians.

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As soon as word got around that the NDA may be backing Alexander, the People’s Front called a press conference and let it be known that it would field a candidate against the Maharashtra Governor, along with the Congress, if President K R Narayanan decided not to contest for a second term.

However, those close to the President do not rule out this possibility if Alexander throws his hat in the ring. If Narayanan decides to contest, it could make it tough going for Alexander and the Dalits could vote for him cutting across parties.

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