UPA presidential candidate Pratibha Patil received a surprise visitor on Saturday evening. Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat dropped in at Jodhpur House where she is put up, not as an elder statesman, but as an elder of the traditional Shekhawat community of Rajasthan Patil is married into.

A Presidential aspirant himself, Shekhawat quietly turned the tables on the UPA nominee whose choice could have been determined by the fact that she too is a Shekhawat by marriage. Patil, who came to the capital to meet UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was scheduled to kick off her campaign with a high-profile meeting with the Vice-President at his residence before she faced him as an opponent in the race to Raisina Hill.

But in the first round of PR exercise Shekhawat clearly outwitted Patil’s political managers by turning up at Jodhpur House--which wore a rather festive look today--to personally give his blessings soon after her arrival. As stumped-out-of-wits campaign managers from the Congress advised her, Patil could hardly keep the visit out of the media glare. “Both in protocol and traditional family terms, the Vice-President is far above her as she is only a Governor of a state and a bahu of the Shekhawat clan of which he is the patriarch,” was the Patil camp’s explanation. Though settled in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon, Patil’s husband Deviraj Singh Shekhawat’s village Chotti Losal is barely 30 km away from Shekhawat’s Khachriawas home. As pointed out by Patil’s supporters, traditionally in the huge Shekhawat clan, Patil would be treated as a daughter-in-law by a clan elder.

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