Presidential polls: From a slum dweller to Bihar’s other Lalu, the challengers to Droupadi Murmu and Yashwant Sinha

On Friday, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-backed Presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu filed her nomination papers in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and many other functionaries and senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Today, former Union minister Yashwant Sinha will file his nomination at the Parliament House as the Opposition candidate for the upcoming Presidential elections. He will be accompanied by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and other leaders from the non-NDA camp.

It has been reported that Trinamool Congress leaders Saugata Roy, Abhishek Banerjee and Santanu Sen, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi are likely to be the part of the delegation that will accompany Sinha.

The K Chandrashekar Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) announced that the party would be supporting Sinha in his candidacy for the 18 July polls and K Chandrashekar Rao and party’s working president KT Rama Rao would be in Delhi to accompany Sinha for the nomination.

However, while all eyes are on the Murmu vs Sinha race, there are other candidates in the fray too. We take a look at the other hopefuls in the Presidential race.

Nominations filed

A total of 15 candidates have so far filed their nominations for the Presidential Election since the process began on 15 June.

The nominations will continue till 29 June and their scrutiny on 30 June is likely to eliminate the non-serious candidates.

On the first day, 15 June, 11 candidates filed their nominations, while three filed them on Thursday and one on Friday. One nomination was rejected on the first day, while two more were rejected on Thursday.

The first candidate to file a nomination was Dr K Padmarajan from Mettuguda in the Salem district of Tamil Nadu.

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The other hopefuls

According to reports, a slum dweller from Mumbai is one of the 15, who has filed his nominations for the Presidential elections.

Sanjay Savji Deshpande, a resident of the Amar Nagar Slum No 1 in Mumbai’s Mulund suburb, was among the first to file his papers.

Other than him, T Ramesh, a social worker from Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu, and Professor Dayashankar Agarwal from Timarpur in Delhi have also thrown their names into the fray.

Other names who have filed their nominations are Pareshkumar Manubhai Mulani from Ahmedabad, Ved Vyas from Mahedragad in Haryana, Ashok Shankar Patil from Dhule in Maharashtra, Vivek Sakharam Bagekar from Pune, Amit Kumar Sharma from Shahdara in Delhi, Ravikumar Kesagani from Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Kankanla Penchala Naidu from Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, and Saira Bano Mohammad Patel from Andheri, Maharashtra.

As per the rules, their candidacy isn’t illegal as Article 58 of the Constitution states that any person can be President if s/he is a citizen of India, has completed the age of 35 years and is qualified for election as a member of the House of the People.

Another candidate who has drawn eyeballs is Lalu Prasad Yadav. However, for those who think this is the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) patriarch and former chief minister of Bihar, they are mistaken. This Yadav is a resident of Marhawra town in Saran.

And incidentally, this is not the first time Yadav will be filing nomination papers for the Presidential election. He had also competed against the incumbent Ram Nath Kovind in 2017.

Speaking to The Mint, the 42-year-old said, “My papers got rejected last time since these were not endorsed by an adequate number of proposers. This time, I am better prepared.”

Yadav, a father of seven children, practises agriculture for a living and engages in social work too.

According to _The Min_t, he is called “dharti pakad” (one who clings on to the earth), a term associated with those who like to contest polls for the sake of thrill and publicity.

Interestingly, the 15 candidates in the fray this election is less than the 17 contestants in the 1967 Presidential poll — the highest till date.

With inputs from agencies

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