Published On:Friday, June 15, 2012
Posted by devil
Pranab is UPA's candidate for President polls
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NEW DELHI: Ending days of speculation, Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has named Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as UPA's Presidential candidate.
This announcement comes after the UPA met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to finalise its presidential candidate.
"Pranab Mukherjee has a long and distinguished record of public service standing over five decades. There is broad support for his candidature," Gandhi said after the UPA meeting at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 7, Race Course Road residence.
Gandhi then appealed to all political parties, all members of parliament and members of state assemblies to support Mukherjee.
Mukherjee was nominated by the Congress party in the face of opposition from a key ally within the ruling coalition. The party, however, won support from other coalition partners for its choice and appeared confident that Mukherjee would win the electoral college vote on July 19.
With Pranab Mukherjee likely to get the support of UPA's allies and possibly even the Left parties, India might soon have Mukherjee as its President.
However, with Pranab having to quit as finance minister, speculation is rife that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to retain the finance portfolio with him once Pranab Mukherjee becomes President.
Meanwhile, political circles were abuzz with the talk that NCP co-founder and former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma has decided to remain in the fray for the President's post, saying that he has the NDA's backing.
His party, however, has not taken very kindly to this and sources indicate that Sangma might be expelled from NCP if he does not withdraw his candidature for the Presidential polls.
Mukherjee has served as finance minister, foreign minister and commerce minister twice and also as defence minister. He chairs most of the cabinet committees tasked with making recommendations on important issues. But the job he has always wanted - that of prime minister - has eluded him.
A confidential cable from the U.S. embassy in New Delhi to Washington on October 24, 2006, described him as "extremely ambitious" and said Sonia and other Congress leaders "remain suspicious of him and do not want to provide him with an opportunity to push (Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh aside."
Mukherjee, a veteran of four decades in politics, has been called the Congress party's chief troubleshooter, crisis manager and even a modern-day Cardinal Richelieu, the clergyman who was the powerful right-hand man to French King Louis XIII.
When his name first surfaced as a potential candidate for the presidency, a Congress spokeswoman said he was too indispensable to the party, but media reports suggested Sonia was uneasy about installing a man in the presidential palace who was unlikely to prove as compliant as his predecessors.
Mukherjee, then finance minister, was asked by party colleagues who should step in to fill the power vacuum. He replied that according to the constitution it should be the second-most senior person in the cabinet, a close aide told Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity that still surrounds the episode.
Mukherjee is lauded for his ability to reach across party lines, but critics say as finance minister he has been too complacent, failing to rein in spending on fuel, food and fertilizer subsidies and win cross-party support for reforms to boost flagging economic growth.
Since delivering his latest budget in March, he has also come under fire for his tough stand on tax proposals that scared off foreign investors and insistence that the euro zone crisis is largely to blame for the economy's woes. Economists say policy inertia at home is also a major factor.
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