By IANS
New Delhi : Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat Monday filed his nomination papers for the presidential election as an independent candidate supported by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), even as one of its key constituents decided to back Pratibha Patil, the nominee of India's ruling coalition.
The octogenarian leader filed two sets of nomination papers for the July 19 poll as senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, accompanied him to the Lok Sabha secretary general's office.
Despite realizing that the numbers are heavily stacked against him with the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and Left parties supporting Pratibha Patil and the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), or the Third Front, refusing to disclose who it was backing, Shekhawat sounded confident.
"I am confident of winning the presidential elections. I believe the numbers in this elections are in my favour," said the 84-year-old Shekhawat who is a former chief minister of Rajasthan.
Leaders of both the Shiv Sena and Trinamool Congress, key allies in the NDA, were noticeably absent on the occasion.
This was not surprising as late Monday the Shiv Sena declared its support for Patil.
"This is going to be a moment of pride for Maharashtra that a Maharashtrian will be occupying the top post in the country for the first time," Sena chief Bal Thackeray said in a statement issued in Mumbai.
He also criticized Shekhawat for indicating his readiness to withdraw from the race if President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam were to contest.
Since June 18, when UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi announced Patil's name as its candidate, the Sena had avoided committing itself to supporting Shekhawat.
Thackeray, however, said the decision to support Patil would not affect the Sena's ties with the BJP in Maharashtra.
As for the Trinamool Congress, its Rajya Sabha MP Dinesh Trivedi, who had earlier committed to accompany Shekhawat, surprisingly absented himself at the last minute.
The absence of these two vital allies was made up at least partially by the presence of former Congress leader and external affairs minister Natwar Singh and Bhim Singh of the Panthers' Party of Jammu and Kashmir, who recently walked out of the state's ruling Congress-Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) combine.
The former foreign minister, who also hails from Rajasthan, even signed Shekhawat's nomination papers. The chief ministers of most of the BJP-ruled states were also present on the occasion.
All eyes will now be on whom the UNPA decides to back or if it decides to abstain from voting after it failed to persuade Kalam to run for a second term.
Kalam had made his stand clear last Friday.
While some UNPA constituents like the AIADMK and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) still favour putting up their own candidate, other allies are learnt to have decided to abstain from the presidential elections.