Kovind was not such a closely guarded secret after all -Governance Now

Kovind was not such a closely guarded secret after all

NDA’s presidential candidate surprised some but the name had been doing rounds

Shankar Kumar | June 20, 2017 | New Delhi

#President #NDA #Narendra Modi #Ram Nath Kovind

(Photo: governor.bih.nic.in)

Ram Nath Kovind, Narendra Modi, NDA, President

“Ram Nath who?” That was the reaction from some newsmakers, when Ram Nath Kovind’s name was announced for the post of Bihar governor in 2015. The same response was repeated on Monday when he was named the ruling NDA’s candidate for the presidential elections.

And surprise there surely is. There were half a dozen names doing rounds from the ruling side, including some cabinet members, some party veterans, some dark horses and some usual suspects. Kovind was not named by anybody – no reporter with deep contacts every counted him among the potentials.

So, it seems, Kovind’s candidature was a closely guarded secret, or a last-minute brainwave of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine.

That is not the case. I happen to have heard the name way back in December from a journalist-turned-administrator close to the ruling regime. This gentleman had told us, in a friendly banter talk, that the Bihar governor could be “potential presidential candidate of the NDA”.

When the same group of journalist-friends met him in March again and asked him if he still believed Kovind was in contention when so many big names had started doing rounds, he said, “Whatever I had to say I have already told you… it’s up to you to take it or leave it.”

Comments

Other News

‘We were under an Emergency…’

The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India By Gopalkrishna Gandhi Aleph Books, 624 pages, Rs 999 Go

Recalling the day the Emergency ended

Saving India from Indira: The Untold Story of Emergency, Memoirs of J. P. Goyal Edited by Rama Goyal Rupa Books, 284 pages, Rs 500 Since Independence, India has deviated from democratic life only once—during the twenty-one months of I

How health camps offer great learning opportunity for medical students

“They also serve who only stand and wait.” This phrase of poet John Milton sums up the essence of quiet service, those individuals, without any titles or acknowledgement, contributing to society. For medical students, serving in public health camps is just such a quiet and transformati

Is BharatNet digging too deep?

India’s ambition to become a digitally empowered society rests on the premise that every citizen, regardless of geography, should have access to reliable and affordable internet. At the heart of this mission is BharatNet, a flagship programme launched by the government of India to provide high-speed

WAVES Summit: A Global Media Powerhouse

In 2019, at the inauguration of National Museum of Indian Cinema, prime minister Narendra Modi had expressed his wish to have a forum of global repute similar to the World Economic Forum, Davos, for India’s media and entertainment (M&E) industry. That wish became reality with the WAVES Summit in