Simon Denyer, Reuters News Agency, 20 July 2007
NEW DELHI — It was billed as a proud and historic day for Indian women, as lawmakers voted yesterday to choose the country’s new president, with the winner widely expected to be, for the first time, a woman. But it has turned instead into a major embarrassment for the government.
Pratibha Patil, the govering coalition’s 72-year-old nominee for the largely ceremonial post of president, was expected to sail through yesterday’s vote with relative ease against the opposition-backed challenger and current vice-president, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
But already, Ms. Patil has run into rougher waters than she or her supporters could have imagined.
And the scandals that are now dogging her candidacy, along with her habit of putting her foot firmly in her mouth, threaten to undermine the post of president, analysts say.
Pratibha Patil’s contested legacy
Priyanka Kakodkar, Dipti Agrawal, Tejas Mehta
Thursday, July 19, 2007 (Jalgaon, Mumbai)
The roots of Pratibha Patil’s family and legacy can be traced back to Maharshtra’s Jalgaon.
It is from here that Patil, a young lawyer and social activist, at the age of 28, won her first Assembly election and went on to serve as Cabinet minister in no less than six governments.
But by mid-80s as Patil moved to national politics, her political stars dimmed. In 2004, there was political resurrection when she was appointed Governor of Rajasthan but it went almost unnoticed.
No wonder this June when the 72-year-old was catapulted from political oblivion to the Presidential race, it took even UPA insiders by surprise.
”We should come together and elect a woman candidate. Of course Pratibha Patil will win as UPA has the numbers,” said Vilasrao Deshmukh, Chief Minister, Maharashtra.
Mired in controversies
The old-school Congressman, a staunch Gandhi family loyalist, is now within striking distance of becoming the country’s first woman President.
But that legacy has been contested so fiercely and publicly that enter Jalgaon today and it’s hard to find a single member of her immediate family.
All of them have been driven away, perhaps, by the raging controversies suddenly in the news.
These include
- A long-buried scandal of financial irregularities in Muktai Sugar Cooperative in Jalgaon that she had started in the 70s.
- Another old case from 1998 when a school teacher had committed suicide and her suicide note blamed Patil’s husband Devi Singh Shekhawat for her death.
- The Pratibha Mahila Cooperative Bank, which she founded in 1974, went bust 30 years later.
- Just three days ahead of the election, wife of a murdered Congress leader demanded an interrogation of Patil in court. Her allegation was that Patil’s brother in September 2005 killed her husband V G Patil.
”I had hoped I would get justice. But now that she might become President, I am tense about the case. I am 100 per cent sure that there is political pressure on the CBI,” said Rajni Patil, petitioner.
The ghosts from Patil’s past are now being splashed in the national media day after day – a well orchestrated campaign in which many see the BJP’s hand.
New front
However, there is much more to Patil who has won many elections, than this rather one-sided picture.
NDTV team found a different dimension of her legacy in Bodhwad tehsil, part of Patil’s old constituency. It’s a BJP stronghold but even now there is support for her.
”A government rule said each tehsil could have only one college. There was a college in Bhusawal. But she got one more opened here. Then she got water for 81 villages from Huknoor Dam,” said a resident of the area.
A legacy that will be overwhelmed if she wins as this will become the region to give India it’s first woman President.