Meira Kumar to launch presidential campaign from Sabarmati Ashram

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 27

Opposition presidential candidate Meira Kumar on Tuesday said she will launch her official campaign from Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat on June 30.

Accompanied by all the top Opposition leaders, save Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi who is still on holiday, Kumar will file her nomination papers tomorrow at 11 am.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi will attend the nomination filing process so will all the top Opposition leaders of 17 parties that are supporting Kumar.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

On the eve of her formal entry into the contest, Meira Kumar, a senior Dalit leader, a former Lok Sabha Speaker and a five-term MP, said the society should “bury caste deep down in the earth and move on.”

She said her election plank was ideological and not caste.

Asked what she thought of the fact that her own support group, including the BSP, insisted on caste while finalising the candidate, Kumar said, “The process for the election to the highest constitutional office of the country is political as is the post.

“There should not be one upmanship of caste for this post. The very fact that so much is being said about the caste of two people contesting the presidential poll this time speaks volumes about how our society thinks of caste.

“We have had candidates from upper castes contest presidential polls in the past but I never remember their castes being discussed.”

Kumar said she was in this battle to fight for the ideology that stands for secularism, pluralism, inclusion, freedom of press and destruction of caste.

#MeiraKumar bats for burying menace of ‘#casteism' - Delhi News https://t.co/CvfoIeg7nn #PresidentialPoll #RamNathKovind #LokSabha

— ANI Multimedia (@ANI_multimedia) June 27, 2017

“It is time we buried caste deep inside the earth,” said Kumar, 72, who is the daughter of India’s first Dalit Deputy Prime Minister, late Jagjivan Ram.

Reiterating her appeal to MPs and MLAs to cast a conscience vote in the July 17 election, Kumar said the fight for the office of the President should be on ideological basis.

She was responding to the comments by Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu who said the presidential election is not an ideological battle.