Presidential hopeful Meira Kumar, who has been fielded as a UPA candidate supported by 17 Opposition parties, will commence her election campaign by visiting Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad on June 30.
Meira Kumar, accompanied by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, former PM Manmohan Singh and other Opposition leaders, filed her nomination papers in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
The former Lok Sabha Speaker is visiting Gujarat at a time when unsubstantiated messages challenging her Dalit credentials have gone viral on social media in the last couple of days.
The 72-year-old Kumar, who has been, apparently, fielded by the Congress Party to buttress her Dalit credentials vis-à-vis the NDA candidate Ram Nath Kovind, also a Dalit, has, of late, been maintaining that it is not a Dalit-v/s Dalit election.
“I have been fighting for principles like equality, secularism and democracy,” she told presspersons soon after visiting Rajghat, the Mahatma Gandhi memorial, and Samta Sthal, set up in the memory of her late father Babu Jagjivan Ram, in New Delhi, prior to filing her nomination on Wednesday, the last date.
The outgoing President, Pranab Mukherjee, will complete his five-year term on July 24.
Polling to elect the new President will take place on July 17 and results will be declared on July 20. The new President will be sworn-in on July 25.