Opposition’s V-P nominee Margaret Alva has administrative and parliamentary experience, represents India’s diversity

Margaret Alva, Vice Presidential candidate for the Opposition, was nominated on Sunday after a joint meeting of leaders from 17 different parties which was chaired by NCP chief Sharad Pawar. A veteran Congress leader who was once considered close to party chief Sonia Gandhi, Alva has under her belt the experience of having been the Governor of multiple states in the past, writes ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader, former Governor, former union minister and former MP Margaret Alva was on Sunday chosen by the opposition parties to contest against NDA’s Jagdeep Dhankar, currently Governor of West Bengal, in the August 6 vice presidential elections.

“It is a privilege and an honour to be nominated as the candidate of the joint opposition for the post of Vice President of India. I accept this nomination with great humility and thank the leaders of the opposition for the faith they’ve put in me,” Alva tweeted shortly after her candidature was announced by NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who hosted a meeting of leaders from 17 opposition parties at his residence.

Alva’s name was proposed by several leaders and was unanimously approved, said the leaders present at the meeting. "She has rich administrative and parliamentary experience and is a minority community leader. Therefore, I supported her," CPI’s D Raja told this channel. "Everyone supported her, including myself. No other name was discussed," MDMK’s Vaiko told ETV Bharat.

Alva will file her papers on Tuesday, the last date for nomination. Though NDA has enough numbers to get Dhankar, a Jat leader from Rajasthan, elected as the next vice president of India, who is also the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the Congress-led opposition parties did not want the elections to go uncontested, said the sources.

In the July 18 Presidential polls, NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu, who is pitted against joint opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha, has been able to win support from some of the opposition parties like the Shiv Sena and JMM as she is both a woman and a Tribal leader. In contrast, the AAP chose to back Sinha.

However, Alva is likely to get support from all the opposition parties, including Sena, JMM, TMC and AAP, as she "is a very distinguished representative of India’s wonderful diversity." TMC, led by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has been at daggers drawn with Dhankar for allegedly playing partisan and is most likely to back Alva.

Alva, 80, is a veteran Congress leader and was considered close to party chief Sonia Gandhi but had been lying low in the party after she alleged in 2008 that tickets were distributed in her home state of Karnataka for monetary considerations. She has been Governor of Rajasthan, Goa, Uttarakhand and Gujarat and has been a four-term Rajya Sabha member and one term in the Lok Sabha. She also served in the cabinets of former Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and PV Narasimha Rao respectively.

Alva was born on April 14, 1942, in Mangaluru. A law graduate, she started her career as a lawyer and later married Niranjan Alva in 1964. He passed away in 2018. Alva has a daughter and three sons.

Among those who attended the opposition meeting included the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, Rajya Sabha chief whip of Congress Jairam Ramesh, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, CPI's D Raja and Binoy Viswam, Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut, DMK's T R Baalu and Tiruchi Siva, SP's Ram Gopal Yadav, MDMK's Vaiko and TRS' K Keshava Rao, RJD's A D Singh, IMUL's E T Mohammed Basheer and Kerala Congress (M)'s Jose K. Mani.