New Delhi: His wasn’t the name that newspaper readers were familiar with or the face that television viewers knew. Today, Ram Nath Kovind walked away from that quiet past — and into the record books as India’s president-elect.
The former Bihar governor and old BJP hand, described variously as low profile, unassuming and affable, had an easy win to the country’s highest constitutional post, securing more than 65 per cent of the votes in the electoral college.
As celebrations broke out in his ancestral home in Paraunkh village in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur Dehat, the 71- year-old Kovind became the first BJP member and only the second Dalit to be elected to Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Stepping away from quietude to the spotlight of constant scrutiny that comes with being the country’s first citizen, he was picked for the job by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance from Raj Bhavan in Patna, where he had struck an easy working relationship with Bihar CM Nitish Kumar.
It was perhaps Kovind’s non-confrontational approach to politics that led the JD(U) chief to back him for the president’s office even though he had been critical of his appointment as the governor, but later it led to the curious situation of the party endorsing the opposition’s candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi for the Vice-President’s post.
This easy demeanour has stood the Kanpur-born former lawyer in good stead, say political watchers. He is not just a Dalit leader, but is known for his organisational skills and is a loyal member of the BJP, attributes that not many in the larger NDA family can boast of.
Names of several presidential probables from the NDA stable had done the rounds, but Kovind, a former national spokesperson of the party, was not among them. While the choice surprised political watchers, it was seen as an astute move for a party working overtime to expand its social base.
