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India set to elect president from lowest Dalit caste

by Rahul Bedi, new delhi

India is set to elect a new president from its Dalit community, only the second time it will have a head of state from the country's lowest and poorest caste.

Nearly 5,000 Indian MPs and provincial legislators from across the country voted on Monday to elect the new president for a five-year term.

The two-way contest is likely to be won by Ram Nath Kovind, a 71-year low caste Dalit lawyer and former state governor, who is backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

His election is being seen as a way for Mr Modi to gain political capital among the Dalit community, who number around 200 million in the nation of 1.3 billion, and are relegated to the margins of society.

Media on Monday reported the alleged beating of a Dalit labourer by upper-caste attackers.

Mr Kovind is being challenged by Meira Kumar, a former diplomat and India’s first woman speaker till 2014, who is also a member of the caste once known as "untouchables".

But she lacks support in the 4,896 strong electoral college in the election, the outcome of which will be announced on July 20.

Mr Kovind’s likely ascent to India’s highest public office would be the first by an Indian politician closely associated with the powerful Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or National Volunteer Corps that mentors the BJP and its numerous affiliates.

The RSS has been proscribed twice since independence in 1947 for its extremist beliefs that include ‘defending’ Hinduism by keeping it ‘pure’ from outside influences like Islam and Christianity.

“My government will offer full cooperation to him (Kovind),” said Mr Modi, as he become one of the first to cast his vote in parliament yesterday.

The new president will replace Pranab Mukherjee, a veteran of the main Opposition Congress Party who has been in the post since July 2012.

The Indian president’s role is largely ceremonial, but in the past has proved decisive in government formation during times of political uncertainty.

The new president will assume office on 25 July, transported to parliament in an ornate horse driven buggy escorted by the elite household cavalry regiment.

The president will then be administered the oath of office by India’s Chief Justice J S Kehar.

Thereafter, the country’s First Citizen will move into the nearby 340-room red sandstone Rashtrapati Bhawan or presidential palace, built as the Colonial Governor General’s residence in the 1930s.

Possibly the world’s largest such establishment, the palace is spread over 330 acres and includes a private golf course, a polo ground, innumerable tennis courts, a hospital and school for children of the household staff, in addition to a full-fledged bakery.

It also houses a modern cinema hall and an elaborate swimming pool-cum-squash court complex and a 13-acre resplendent Mughal garden that is open to the public for a few months each year.

Nearly 25 chefs cater to the Presidential staff of which two are exclusively dedicated to the First Citizen’s culinary requirements.

The President also has a’ summer house’ in the former Imperial capital Shimla in the Himalayas north of Delhi and another residence in Hyderabad in the south.

The President’s household cavalry enjoys facilities no less luxurious, which includes dispatching its polo ponies for ‘summering’ to a specially designated estate in the Himalayan foothills, 180 miles east of Delhi, to spare them the city’s harsh summer heat.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/17/india-set-elect-president-lowest-dalit-caste/