Top BJP ministers in party’s panel on presidential election

BJP president Amit Shah authorised on Monday three senior ministers to negotiate with political parties a consensus candidate to succeed President Pranab Mukherjee, who demits office on July 24.

Home minister Rajnath Singh, defence minister Arun Jaitley and information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu will seek to navigate not only testy ties with the opposition but also some of the government’s own allies to find a common candidate. Should they fail presidential poll will be held on July 17. Nominations for candidates close on June 28.

The president is a largely ceremonial post, but in an increasingly polarised domestic political climate parties are seeking influence over an office that yields power when it comes to close elections or giving assent to controversial legislation.

For the opposition, the presidential elections are also an opportunity to rally a grand coalition of anti-BJP parties in the run up to the 2019 national elections.

There is no clarity on who Prime Minister Narendra Modi favours, although sources said his party’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has sought to back either party veteran Murli Manohar Joshi or foreign minister Sushma Swaraj for the job.

The opposition Congress has already moved to rally support for an anti-BJP candidate.

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The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will declare by June 26 the result of an exam for admission to the country’s medical and dental colleges after getting the go-ahead from the Supreme Court on Monday, bringing relief to more than a million students.

The Supreme Court stayed a Madras high court order that restrained the CBSE from declaring the result of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) 2017. “After the court’s go-ahead we have started the process of preparing the result... We will declare the results within two weeks,” a CBSE official said.

The board would have to put online more than a million answer sheets and the process would take a few days but the result would be out not later than June 26, the official, who didn’t wish to be identified, said.

A vacation bench of justice Prafulla C Pant and justice Deepak Gupta accepted the CBSE’s argument that if the stay was not vacated, college schedules would be thrown out of gear.

“The high court shouldn’t have easily and liberally interfered with the schedule,” the bench said of the May 24 order.

The top court said the result, counselling and admissions would be conditional to its decision on matters pending before it, as it asked high courts not to entertain petitions relating to NEET.

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