The 2022 Indian presidential election will be the 17th presidential election to be held in India. Ram Nath Kovind is expected to be the incumbent president at the time of the election. Article 56(1) of the Constitution of India provides that the President of India shall remain in office for a period of five years. Consequent to the expiry of the term of President Kovind, an election to fill in the office is expected to be scheduled.
BJP want to send a strong signal by fielding a leader from an underprivileged or geographically under-represented community. Several names are doing the rounds
Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu is a frontrunner for the top post but the BJP leadership has yet to take a call on whether incumbent Ram Nath Kovind should be offered a second term.
As of April 2022, the following people have been subjects of speculation about their potential candidacy for Presidency.
For president, two of the names doing the rounds are tribal women leaders Anusuiya Uikey (governor of Chhattisgarh) and Draupadi Murmu (former Jharkhand governor). Uikey belongs to Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara. She has been on commissions of Scheduled Tribes both in the state and at the Centre. Murmu was a minister in the Odisha government two decades ago and comes from the state’s tribal district of Mayurbhanj. The two leaders fulfil both criteria: ‘tribal’ and ‘women’.
two other names in circulation are of Karnataka governor Thawar Chand Gehlot and Kerala governor Arif Mohammad Khan. Before being picked as governor, Gehlot was a veteran Dalit face of the BJP and leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha. The choice of Khan, who is known for his liberal views, arguably may go against the BJP’s hard Hindutva stance in polls. Both Gehlot and Khan are also being considered for the vice-president’s post, just as Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Arjun Munda are.
Opposition parties are also coming up with some intresting names , Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), M.K. Stalin (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), Uddhav Thackeray (Shiv Sena) and K. Chandrashekar Rao (Telangana Rashtra Samithi).
