The country is poised to see yet another election for a Constitutional post in the next couple of days as M Venkaiah Naidu of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who claims to be apolitical, are locking horns in a bout, the result of which is to be decided by the members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
The Opposition was quick in getting their act together for the vice-presidential election and fielded Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a self-styled intellectual who claims day in and day out that he is apolitical.
Since the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has the advantage of the numbers, the contest is only of academic interest and Naidu will sail through without much difficulty. But the run up to the vice-presidential election is witnessing both the ruling and the opposition dispensation issuing charges and counter charges against each other.
The BJP simply baffled the Opposition, as well as the “all, knowing” media by fielding Ram Nath Kovind as its candidate in the Presidential election. Since January 2017, the Indian media has been agog with names of various political and apolitical persons floated by political correspondents and analysts as the candidates for the presidential race attributing to sources in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as well as those close to the BJP leadership. The names of Ratan Tata, Narayana Murthy, Sudha Murthy from the corporate world and Mohan Bhagwat, Sumitra Mahajan and Draupadi Murmu were floated by these self-styled analysts. Though Bhagwat laughed off the news about his name as a candidate for the president, the mainstream media was so certain of its forecast that the denial did not find mention as a news item.
The rest is history. The Opposition was quick in getting their act together for the vice-presidential election and fielded Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a self-styled intellectual who claims day in and day out that he is apolitical. It was his personal hatred for Narendra Modi which qualified him as a candidate for the vice-president’s post. If one is to go be the antecedents of Gandhi, this grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, would be the ideal person to be the world’s top hypocrite.
Immediately after the May 2014 Lok Sabha election, Gopalakrishna Gandhi wrote an Open letter to the Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi scoffing at the public mandate he got in the hustings. “While many millions are ecstatic that you will become Prime Minister, many more millions may, in fact, be disturbed, greatly disturbed by it.,” wrote Gandhi in the Open Letter which was published in The Hindu of Chennai.
Gandhi declared in the letter that he himself does not like the idea of seeing Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister. The reason given by the former IAS officer who was a UPA appointed governor of West Bengal was multifarious in nature. The Gujarat riots are the prime reason for Gandhi’s hatred for Modi in spite of the fact the latter had proved his innocence through a series of Agnipareekshas. Another reason given by Gandhi is that Modi has the approval of only 31 per cent of the electorate while 69 per cent were opposed to him. This is a ridiculous statement by this self-serving bureaucrat-turned-self-styled-apolitical leader.
As Chairman of the Rajya Sabha it is hard to see how you would function in a fair and neutral manner.
Mr. Gandhi, where were you when Manmohan Singh was sworn in as India’s Prime Minister in 2004 when he/ the Congress had the mandate of just 28.55 per cent votes? Wasn’t it with the support extended by the DMK, MDMK, and the PMK who were all supporters of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE chief who masterminded the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 that the Congress cobbled up a majority and made Manmohan Singh the Prime Minister? Mr. Gandhi, the BJP had polled 33.3 per cent popular votes in the 2004 Lok Sabha election. Where was your indignation in 2004, Mr. Gandhi?
Your resignation as Governor of Bengal was followed by your appointment as chairman of Kalakshetra, the temple of arts set up by Rukmini Devi Arundale. About your tenure as chairman of the Kalakshetra, the less said the better.
Mr. Gandhi, it is immaterial to Team PGurus whether Naidu becomes the vice president or not. But we have strong reservations about you being the candidate for such an important Constitutional post because you have a hidden agenda… Astrologers who were consulted by you and your henchmen to find out the possibilities of your becoming the Vice President may not tell you this … You have one set of rules for Modi and another for the Congress and Yechury’s Communist Party. As Chairman of the Rajya Sabha it is hard to see how you would function in a fair and neutral manner.
And that is grounds enough for you to not be elected the Vice President of the country.
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Beautifully written. Though I had always thought that Shri Mahatma Gandhi’s family has not got their due recognition and the Nehru family has cornered all the glory to itself (if at all it has any), Shri Gopikrishnana Gandhi’s hypocrisy is so blatant. You have very rightly pointed out that he may not have acted in a non partisan manner in the Rajya Sabha had he been elected the Vice President of India.