NAJMA HEPTULLA’S PRAYERS GO WASTE
Poor Manipur Governor Najma Heptulla! Her lifetime dream to become India’s Vice-President was once again shattered when PM Modi picked M. Venkaiah Naidu as the NDA’s candidate. Najma (77) had stationed herself in New Delhi to push her name. If one goes by information being shared by some of her trusted friends, she had met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who suggested that she should meet BJP chief Amit Shah. But Najma could not meet Amit Shah. One of her friends says that Najma had confided that she had met PM Modi some months ago and that he had politely told her “not to do lobbying outside” and asked her instead to suggest a tribal leader’s name. But another friend said that Najma was upset as she could not meet PM Modi face-to-face and spoke to him over telephone. A top opposition leader from Maharashtra apparently suggested her name to the BJP leadership. Najma’s rise in politics has been due to the claim that she is the grand niece of noted freedom fighter and scholar, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was India’s first Education Minister. In 2004, Najma had crossed over from the Congress to its chief rival—Bharatiya Janata Party—with her supporters hoping that the saffron brigade would surely make her the Vice-President to establish its secular face. But it did not happen. Now with Naidu heading to be Vice-President, there seems to be no scope for a miracle to happen in future. Despite her age, from PM Modi’s point of view, he had made her the Minister for Minority Affairs. Recently, she was shifted to Manipur as Governor. In May, she also became the Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central university. Some political pundits believe that if she would have stayed with her first party, Congress, her ambition might have been fulfilled. She had quit the Congress alleging that Sonia Gandhi had humiliated her. They believe that she may have thought that the NDA government led by Atal Behari Vajpayee would come back to power. But the India Shining campaign had failed to stop the Congress-led UPA capturing the seat of power. Najma has been a fivetime member of the Rajya Sabha—she stepped into the House of Elders for the first time in 1980—and its Deputy Chairman for 16 years. In the corridors of power, many see Najma as an “over-smart and over-ambitious” person. There have been charges