Bengaluru: While former foreign minister S. M. Krishna's bombshell - his shock resignation from the Congress party on Sunday - set the cat among the pigeons with many in the Congress concerned that the old Mysore-Mandya Congress bastion was as good as lost, there could be more trouble brewing for the decimated opposition at the centre, if the embittered former Congressman is, as is being widely speculated, the BJP's pick for the 14th President of the Republic of India.
BJP insiders have let it be known that Mr. Krishna, who on Monday dropped hints that he was open to joining any other party, could announce he was joining the BJP when he meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi in early February. Although Mr Krishna has strenuously denied this thus far, sources close to him said he has taken six long months to craft his strategy, with long stints in Delhi where he networked with leaders from all parties, particularly the BJP. "He wasn’t there to meet Congress leaders," a BJP functionary said.
The rationale behind Mr. Krishna as the BJP's choice to succeed the outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee hinges on the UP polls results on March 11, with one assessment being that if the BJP does well in the polls, the Modi-Amit Shah duo will seek to strengthen their position by bringing in the first ever BJP functionary into Rashtrapati Bhavan. Every BJP insider says this will be a man who is a hardcore saffronist.
Others say however that if the numbers do not favour the BJP in the UP polls and it takes a beating at the hustings across Uttarakhand and Punjab, they will need the backing of opposition parties such as Nitish Kumar's JD(U), the AIADMK and others, and will have to find a candidate who is more acceptable to all.
The last time the BJP was in power under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, and did not have the numbers, it chose eminent scientist APJ Abdul Kalam for president. This June-July, even with the overwhelming numbers in parliament, 282 to Congress' 44, 1126 MLAs to the Congress' 900, and poll predictions of a wafer thin majority in UP, the BJP may just find it needs SMK as much as SMK needs the BJP.
