Presidential candidate of the Opposition parties, former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, filed her nomination papers on the last day on Wednesday in the presence of a galaxy of leaders belonging to the Congress and other non-NDA parties. Earlier, she visited Rajghat, Samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi to pay tributes.
Prior to her arrival at Parliament House to submit papers to Lok Sabha Secretary General Anoop Mishra, Union ministers M Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar, accompanied by other BJP leaders, submitted a fourth set of nomination papers on behalf of NDA candidate Ramnath Kovind that could not be filed by him on June 23.
Flanked by Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former PM Manmohan Singh, Meira Kumar declared: "From today, our fight of ideology has started. This ideology is based on democratic values, inclusiveness in society, freedom of the press and individuals, end of poverty, transparency and destruction of caste structure." Coming out of the returning officer's room, Sonia Gandhi said: "For us, it is a battle of ideologies, principles and truth and we will fight it."
Those present at the time of filing of papers by Meira Kumar included NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechuri, CPI's D Raja, DMK's Kanimozhi, Samajwadi Party's Naresh Agrawal, BSP's Satish Chandra Misra, JMM's Sanjeev Kumar, Trinamul's Derek O'Brien, and Congress leaders Ambika Soni, Ahmed Patel Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge. Those who turned up also included chief ministers and former CMs. Amarinder Singh, Virbhadra Singh, V Narayanasamy, Siddharamaiah and Mukul Sangma were among the CMs present while former CMs included Digvijay Singh, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Meira Kumar reiterated her call to hear the voice of "inner conscience" and take the country forward. She said she would reach Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat on Thursday evening and start her campaign the next day. She will go from there to Mumbai and then Bengaluru and be in Bihar on July 6, finishing her campaign on July 15, two days before the polls.
The nomination papers are to be scrutinised on Thursday when all those entering the race as individuals are most likely to be struck off, leaving it to be a direct fight between Meira Kumar and Kovind.
Kumar said she had already appealed to all members of the electoral college that this was a very important time when the country stood at a crossroads. "There is one path which takes us towards narrow-mindedness and no concern for the poor and downtrodden, while the other path leads to upliftment of Dalits, poor, oppressed, downtrodden, women and labour and people of all religions.
She said she was not upset with Union Minister Sushma Swaraj, who recently tweeted a video to suggest Ms Kumar, 72, is not President material. "During elections, some people get insecure and angry. That's when they throw mud on others," she told reporters. On Sunday, Swaraj posted a video from 2013 that showed her repeatedly being interrupted during her speech in the Lok Sabha by Kumar.
