By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: With the presidential elections set to take place in July, a Tamil Nadu-based party ‘Samuga Samatuva Padai’ on Monday demanded that a Christian be chosen for the top Constitutional post.
SSP president P Sivakami told reporters at a press conference here on Monday that a Christian President would give representation to the minority within minority as well as those communities that feel “let down” “It is high time a Christian President was elected so that the minority population will feel secure,” she said.
“India is a secular country and Christians also are equally secular for this post. We have to break the image that only Muslims or Hindus are secular,” Sivakami told reporters here on Monday.
A Hindu herself, Sivakami also founder president of Samuga Samatuva Padai Party (SSPP) was camping in Shillong to spread this message.
The campaign started on February 10 this year will end before the presidential elections.
She said that for the past many years not a single President was elected from among the Christians while calling upon the people including political parties to support this cause.
With special reference to the minority section, Sivakami said “It has always been said that the President’s post is above caste, creed and religion. If that is the case, then a President from the Christian minority community should be chosen.”
Sivakami has already toured Tamil Nadu, Karnataka Delhi and Meghalaya and will visit Mizoram on Tuesday and during her brief stay in Aizawl, she will have an audience with Mizoram chief minister, Lalthanhawla to roll out the campaign.
Meanwhile, the former bureaucrat did not disclose probable names whom she might consider “fit and competent” enough to occupy for the country’s top post stating that she does not have anybody in mind as yet.
“A working group is being formed to work this out,” she informed.
Poster campaigns which will begin from April end, would be taken out in the Northeastern states and other states in the country.
Meanwhile, replying to a query on her comment on the present President, Pratibha Devi Singh, Sivakami said, “She has occupied the post and I don’t have any objection.”
She however indirectly rated that Patil cannot be compared with the past Presidents and the likes of Kocheril Raman Narayanan and Dr APJ Abdul Kalam popularly known as the “people’s President”. Narayanan was the first Dalit and the first Malayali, to have been President of India.
Patil who was put up by the Congress and its allies, won the presidential election held on 19 July 2007. She defeated her nearest rival, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat of the BJP-led NDA by over 300,000 votes. She took office as India’s first woman president on 25 July 2007.