Let MPs with sovereign mind elect the most deserving: Gopal Gandhi

In three different interviews over the last few days, Gopalkrishna Gandhi has made it clear that he sees himself as a ‘citizen candidate’ beyond party lines. While he responded to 18 different parties that wanted him to contest the Vice-presidential election, he reiterated, he had appealed to MPs in the NDA also to vote for him.

The President and the Vice President, he points out, do not belong to the ‘politics of political parties’. No party whip applies though the voting is secret because the members of the electoral college are asked to vote according to their own independent judgment.

‘While India needs a good Vice-President, that does not have to be me,’ says the former Governor to The Indian Express while to The Times of India, he repeated, ‘India does not need Gopalkrishna Gandhi as Vice-President’ but it needs someone who would uphold the Republic’s ethos, the Constitution’s values and aspirations of India’s states and Union Territories.

If NDA’s nominee inspires national confidence and deserves to be in office, why shouldn’t an elector vote for him, he asks aloud and goes on to add that India needs a good Vice-President but that does not have to be him.

Here is a selection of what the Opposition’s Vice-Presidential candidate said:

• Terror faces India. The State will, as only the State can, fight the fire. But we, as a people, need to fight the embers that radiate from the fire, namely, communal suspicion, hatred and bigotry. Who tells us how to do that better than Gandhi? War may face India. Our defence forces will fight the war as only they can. But we as a people will have to see that no war casts a shadow on the mutual trust that binds us together as a multi-faith, mature society. Who can tell us to do that better than Gandhi, who knew four wars in his life?
• I must add that if only the government paused to look at itself and said that in this or that matter, we have gone wrong, have been in error, and we will correct ourselves, it would do the country great deal of good. It would bring a breath of oxygen into our ego-polluted air. This applies to the opposition, no less.
• It is time we started rating ourselves in the clear mirror of our consciences, before rating others. That will give us the moral confidence ¬ and moral authority ¬ to rate others, especially our governments. (How would you rate the Narendra Modi government?)
• Having said this, it is not insensitive, no democratically elected government, can be. But such are the compulsions of retaining office, sustaining self-images, widening spheres of influence, that self-justification rather than self-correction, becomes paramount.