New Delhi: The BJP parliamentary board is scheduled to meet over this weekend to decide the party’s vice-presidential candidate. The race for the coveted post is mainly between two state governors — West Bengal’s Jagdeep Dhankhar and Kerala’s Arif Mohammed Khan. Lurking somewhere in the shadows is former Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. Sources claimed Dhankhar emerged a “frontrunner”, but close on his heels is the Kerala governor. The victory of the NDA candidate is a foregone conclusion as the ruling alliance has a clear majority in the electoral college. After the BJP fixes on a name, it is likely to reach out to the Opposition parties and its allies to seek a consensus.
The voting to elect India’s 16th vice-president will be held on August 6 as the tenure of incumbent M. Venkaiah Naidu ends on August 10. The results will be announced the same day (August 6), while the new V-P will be sworn in on August 11. The last day to file nominations is July 19. Besides these three figures, two Sikh leaders are also said to be in the reckoning — former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri.
While sources say the BJP is zeroing on Dhankhar and Khan, the Opposition is still in a dilemma on selecting a joint candidate. Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has called a meeting of the Opposition to discuss the vice-presidential polls on July 17.
Dhankhar, who has emerged as the “front-runner”, is a Jat leader from Rajasthan and was a Lok Sabha MP from Jhunjhunu.
He was named West Bengal governor in 2019. Since taking office, there has been a running feud between him and chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
However, eyebrows were raised after a recent meeting of Ms Banerjee and Mr Dhankhar in Darjeeling. The other guest present was Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma. While Ms Banerjee said it was a “courtesy call”, sources said it was to seek her support for both the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the NDA. The presidential election will be held on Monday, July 18. While Droupadi Murmu is the NDA’s candidate, the Opposition has fielded Union minister Yashwant Sinha for the top post.
Speculation has been rife in BJP circles of late about Kerala governor Arif Mohammed Khan being the NDA’s vice-presidential post. With Ms Murmu, a tribal leader, as President, and Khan, a Muslim, as vice-president, the BJP is hoping to tick all the right boxes. At a time when the Opposition parties are trying to paint Modi 2.0 as aggressively high on the Hindutva agenda, making a Muslim as vice-president “will be sending a positive signal to the community”, a party leader said.
Khan, who was appointed Kerala governor in 2019 was the civil aviation minister in the then V.P. Singh government in the 1990s. Mr Khan, who was earlier in the Congress, had quit the party over the Muslim Personal Law Bill that was brought in by the Rajiv Gandhi government after the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano ruling in the 1980s. He joined the BJP in 2004.
The other Muslim face, whose name has been there for quite some time, is that of former minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. When the BJP didn’t renominate Mr Naqvi for his Rajya Sabha seat, even party insiders were somewhat taken aback. However, sources close to him then started talking about a “higher role” for Mr Naqvi.
The 64-year-old leader was recently sent to campaign for the Lok Sabha byelection in Rampur, a Muslim-dominated constituency in Uttar Pradesh, that the BJP succeeded in wresting from the Samajwadi Party. While some believe Mr Naqvi has been left out in the cold, others in the BJP continue to root for him.
