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Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu has played a key role in the selection of Dr A P J Abdul Kalam as the consensus candidate for the post of President.
TDP sources said that Naidu, having realised that his lobbying for the elevation of Vice-President Krishan Kant was not securing adequate support from within NDA, floated the name of Dr Abdul Kalam as a consensus candidate on Sunday.
Naidu phoned up NDA convenor and Defence Minister George Fernandes and mooted the name of Kalam.
Fernandes did some probing and found that Kalam was acceptable to NDA constituents. He got back to Naidu and conveyed the feedback.
Thereafter, armed with Fernandes' feedback, Naidu sounded Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during a telephonic talk late on Sunday night. He pointed out to Vajpayee that at this juncture, when Gujarat violence had given a bad name to the country's secular image, the election of Kalam to the highest office would send a right message across the world.
He said that the selection of the former scientific advisor to Government of India and the defence minister would also blunt the shrill anti-India campaign by Pakistan.
Naidu called up Kalam at Chennai and sought his consent before formally proposing the name to the prime minister.
Naidu told his party leaders that the choice of Kalam was the best under the present circumstances. He informed them that Kalam spent most part of his professional life at the Defence Research and Development Laboratories at Hyderabad and thus he was as much a Telugu bidda (son), even though he hailed from Tamil Nadu.
Coverage of the election for the 11th President of India
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