The Congress-led Opposition's Presidential candidate Meira Kumar termed her upcoming contest with the ruling party's nominee Ram Nath Kovind, a “fight of ideologies”. Addressing the media ahead of filing her papers for the election on Wednesday, in the presence of top Opposition leaders, Meira, who is selected as the joint candidate of 17 Opposition parties, said the unity is based on “their firm ideological positions- democratic values, inclusiveness, social justice, freedom of press, transparency, end of poverty, destruction of caste structure- as some of those cherished values, which form an important component of this ideology.”
She thanked the Opposition parties for unanimously selecting her as their candidate to contest the July 17 presidential election, she stressed that this ideology “is very close to my heart”. Meira, former Lok Sabha speaker, will most likely begin her campaign from June 30, from the Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat. She pointed out that in the previous presidential elections, caste was never discussed. “But when Dalits contest, their caste is being discussed and their virtues become subordinate. So I can clearly see how society is thinking in 2017. I want that we should wrap caste and bury it deep inside the ground, and our society should move forward.”
