Prez Poll: The Quest For Raisina Hills

Projecting a Dalit leader, BJP is eying on 2019. The President poll will be a warm match for the saffron party. BJP has made a strategic move by projecting a Dalit, a Hindutva ideologue and a BJP worker. The ruling party very well knows after 1990s the office of the President has gained significance due to the advent of coalition politics.

- Partha Jyoti Borah

The most coveted election to the highest constitutional post in the country is back again. The 320 acre sprawling erstwhile Viceroy’s House which later was renamed Rashtrapati Bhawan after its first occupant Rajendra Prasad took it over is all set to welcome its new entrant. For last seventy years the magnanimous architectural marvel juxtaposed with the war memorial – India Gate built to honour the Indian soldiers of British Army who died in World War I, have remained the testimony of India’s pride. Situated in the hill-top of Raisina, British architect Edwin Lutyen took 17 years to give the mansion the present shape. After independence, India adopted Westminster model thus reducing the occupant of Lutyen’s masterstroke creation into an insignia of democracy guarding the India’s magna carta on the advices of council of ministers.

President of India enjoys the highest constitutional immunity in the country; free from all kind of journalistic lampooning. However, 5th President of India, Assam’s Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed faced ruthless brush of a cartoonist when he,in jiffy,signed the emergency proclamation in 1975. Eminent cartoonist Abu Abraham of The Indian Express showed the President signing the ‘draconian ordinance’ from the bath tub only to face press censorship for the next three years. This was an apocalyptic revelation for India as a country of the bitter truth that President of India is incumbent Prime Minister’s pick – mostly someone who would in his capacity never question the decisions of the PM’s cabinet.