Pratibha Patil expected to break the jinx

Jun 15, 2007, 7:30 GMT

New Delhi, June 15 (IANS) Pratibha Patil, the candidate of India's ruling coalition and its allies, will be the fourth woman to contest the presidential elections and the first who is expected to win.

All three previous women candidates lost badly.

In fact, there had never been a serious woman candidate until 2002 when the Left fielded freedom fighter Lakshmi Sahgal.

Sahgal, who contested against President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, was the first woman fielded by any political party. While Kalam won with 922,884 votes, Sahgal got just 107,366 votes.

It was in the fourth presidential election in 1967 that a woman - Manohara Holkar - tried her luck to get to the Rashtrapati Bhavan for the first time. But among eight candidates, she did not get a single vote.

Eminent scholar Zakir Hussain became the president from that election.

The woman candidate in the next election in 1969 was luckier. Furcharan Kaur, who took on V.V. Giri and N. Sanjeeva Reddy, finished fifth among 15 candidates.

Kaur won 940 of the total 836,337 votes. Giri won with 401,515 votes.

The number of candidates in the presidential election has come down after parliament brought an amendment to the Presidential Election Act - to avoid the presence of those who did not have even a 'remote chance of getting elected'.

It was also decided that a presidential candidate should be subscribed by at least 10 voters and second by another 10. The voters in a presidential election are MPs or state legislators.

In 1997, through another ordinance, this number was increased to 50.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service