Vice-president Hamid Ansari early bird in presidential race

NEW DELHI: Friends of vice-president Hamid Ansari have begun hectic lobbying for fielding him as a candidate in the upcoming presidential polls with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Front and a clutch of unattached parties. NDA has not yet indicated its support to Ansari, though his supporters have been lobbying with alliance leaders.

Following its debilitating defeats in the recent assembly polls, Congress is no longer in a position to nominate a party heavyweight, leaving it with the next best choice of going along with a consensus candidate.

Though Ansari is not directly involved in these negotiations, people familiar with the development told ET that persons close to the vice-president have started sounding out NDA chief ministers. This lobby is already in touch with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar.

Ansari's supporters believe he stands a good chance of emerging a consensus choice because, being a Muslim, he is likely to be backed by both Left parties and the Samajwadi Party that now commands a chunk of votes in the electoral college. The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress may also find it difficult to oppose him for the same reason, they say.

The composition of the electoral college that elects the President has changed after the assembly polls, with SP commanding a total vote value of 66,688. JD(U) has a total vote value of 40,737, while BSP accounts for 45,473. BJP has 225,301 vote value and Congress still has the highest with 330,485. Trinamool Congress, which has been at loggerheads over several issues with Congress, which leads the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre, has a vote value of 45,925, giving Banerjee a role in choosing the next President.

While UPA's vote value of 4,59,483 accounts for 30% of the total strength of the electoral college, NDA commands 28% of the total votes. Non-UPA, non-NDA parties - including AIADMK, which has 36,920 vote value - have a vote value of 263,824, making up 24% of the total votes.

The value of an MLA's vote is assessed by dividing the population as per the 1971 census by the number of seats in the respective assembly. The quotient is further divided by 1,000. There are efforts by a section of Congress to highlight the anomaly between the 1971 census deciding the value of vote of an MLA, even as that MLA was elected after the delimitation based on the 2001 census. A Congress leader said a "purely academic" exercise is on to determine how the value of the vote would change in case 2001 census is taken as the basis of calculation.