NEW DELHI: Living up to his reputation as P.Ms nominee as general secretary of the C.P.(M) Harkishan Singh Surjeet has slipped out of India quietly for the ruling party to organize its strategy to win presidential election without much opposition.

Surjeet is widely regarded as a supporter of Prime Ministers house. On all important occasions he had been backing the ruling party offering on other occasions a mock fight.

This time when Janata Dal chief V.P.Singh was insisting on scheduled caste as the oppositions candidate for the post of President Surjeet pooh-poohed the idea and left for the U.K. and other western countries to collect funds have medical tests and spend a few months.

V.P.Singhs strategy could have resulted in the victory of the oppositions candidate because the scheduled castes and tribes M.P.s belonging to all parties are united on the issue. Thus the opposition nominee could have prevented a Brahman from occupying the highest post again.

Surjeet as well as C.P.I.s bania Chief Inderjit Gupta wanted the presidential candidate to be selected on “merits” and not for his caste at birth. To this V.P.Singh hit back “Does the left want a gold medalist or an I.A.S. topper?” V.P.Singh asked whether “merit” and scheduled castes could not go together. By electing a scheduled caste man as next head of State we would be sending a significant message to the scheduled castes which would be good for the country. V.P. Singh observed.

But the CP.(M) chief Gupta argued that no such message could be sent when the country had a backward castes man Giani Zail Singh as the President.

Sharma is thus bound to emerge as Congress (I)’s candidate by default. Otherwise the ruling party had kept its options open and was assessing the opposition parties” strategy. There was every likelihood of B.J.P. also backing an opposition candidate.

Meanwhile the ruling party has managed to have the Janata Dal (Gujarat) merged into the Congress (I) to strengthen its hold on the Presidential electorate. Many more former Congressmen like Hegde of Kamataka and Abdul Ghafoor of Bihar are being admitted to the ruling party

Article extracted from this publication >> June 19, 1992