Playing the tribal card, the former Lok Sabha Speaker, Purno A. Sangma, continued vigorously with his campaign for the presidency, even as the ruling Congress remained silent on its nominee. Mr. Sangma, who has been sponsored by the Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu and Odisha, Jayalalithaa and Naveen Patnaik, met CPI Rajya Sabha member D. Raja on Monday, ahead of scheduled meetings with the general secretaries of the CPI (M) and CPI, Prakash Karat and A.B. Bardhan, on Tuesday.
Mr. Sangma has already met Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Nitin Gadkari, Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (U) leader Nitish Kumar, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh, Lok Jan Shakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan and Nationalist Congress chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. None of these leaders has yet made a commitment to him: only Mr. Pawar, his party president, has rejected the idea.
The former Lok Sabha Speaker has also been quoted as saying that he has sought meetings with Trinamool Congress Chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. To a question on Ms. Gandhi, whose foreign origins he had denounced before leaving the Congress, he said: “That is very old. I have apologised to her — the family came to my son's wedding reception.”
Mr. Sangma's calling card is a letter from the Tribal Forum of India, an organisation whose members are tribal leaders from various political parties, and which met on May 9 to sponsor a tribal leader for the President. Mr. Sangma's name was on the panel, but he pipped his colleagues to the post, he said, when Ms. Jayalalithaa and Mr. Patnaik picked his name. In an interview, he said the remaining names were those of five-time Nagaland Chief Minister S.C. Jamir, Union Tribal Affairs Minister Kishore Chandra Deo, Congress leader Arvind Netam, Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker and BJP leader Karia Munda, and the former Chief Election Commissioner, J.M. Lyngdoh.
As his chief sponsor, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister has been working the phones for him, and has already spoken to BJP leader L.K. Advani, Mr. Karat, Mr. Bardhan, Telugu Desam Party boss N. Chandrababu Naidu, Mr. Mulayam Singh, and Shiromani Akali Dal Chief and Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.
Meanwhile, Ms. Banerjee, in an interview to CNN-IBN, listed her own nominees — Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, the former West Bengal Governor, Gopal Gandhi, and the former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. In that interview, she remained non-committal on the possibility of supporting Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as the next President. To a question on the fact that she hadn't mentioned Mr. Mukherjee, she said: “No, I didn't say, but if it [Congress] allows him, who am I to oppose it? It depends on the majority. It is a democratic country.” On the fact that he hails from Bengal, her riposte was: “Is he a son of Bengal? He is a son of the world.”
Mr. Sangma is clearly leaving no stone unturned to eliminate possible candidates. Referring to Mr. Mukherjee, he told a news channel: “Pranab babu will be suitable for the Prime Minister's job, his expertise, his experience would be wasted [as President],” he said, adding, “He is of stature… a computer.”
