NDA to field Najma for vice-president

With the NDA announcing former deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, Najma Heptullah, as its candidate for the vice-presidential poll, the Congress is sure to step up its efforts to get its candidate Hamid Ansari elected.

Being a former Congress member, Heptullah arouses antagonism in the party like few others. Old-timers say the level of hostility against Heptullah is matched by the way the Congress viewed VP Singh when he resigned as a minister from the Rajiv Gandhi government and floated the Jan Morcha.

Now, the three-cornered contest is going to get more interesting, more political and more complex.

The Third Front has announced Rashid Masood as its candidate. As Hamid Ansari was part of the Left's original panel of candidates suggested to the Congress, it cannot, with a clear conscience, support the Third Front candidate, though it may support the front generally.

With a strength of around 290 MPs in the Lok Sabha and about 110 in the Rajya Sabha, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has a slender majority. A total of 790 MPs are eligible to vote and the alliance needs 395 votes to prevent a second preference count.

It is clear that this election (the post has seen a multi-cornered contest just once, in 1969) is going to be as interesting as the presidential election. In 1969, VV Giri quit as vice-president as he was elevated as president following Zakir Husain's death. There were six contesting candidates but the result was cut and dry.

GS Pathak won after first preference votes. This time, however, things are quite different and the Congress managers have already begun working to ensure the victory of their candidate.