If she’s a believer, Pratibha Patil could consult an astrologer just to comprehend what hit her on Thursday, June 14. Only the stars appear to explain her surprise elevation as the UPA-Left candidate for the president’s post. An astrologer pontificating on a TV channel said that the reason her name appeared all of a sudden was that rajyog was very strong in her kundali. The stars were so configured that Sonia Gandhi, UPA and the Left had no option but to recommend her name unanimously! I am sure some other astrologer is consoling Shivraj Patil and blaming that Red Star. After all, communist stars always operate as extraconstitutional — or extra-celestial — centres of power.

Pratibha Patil’s career and character have been such that she has no enemies, no rivals, no competitors, a good way to be away from the media glare. No wonder, most mediapersons were clueless about her profile when her name was announced on Thursday. They just knew that she was the governor of Rajasthan. Hardly anyone knew that she was married to Devisingh Shekhawat and therefore had a Rajasthani background. She had not changed her name to Pratibha Shekhawat.

Born in Jalgaon, the cotton-growing Khandesh region of north Maharashtra, she studied in Mumbai, has a residence in Amravati and was the youngest member of the legislative assembly. That was way back in 1962, when she was just 27 and unmarried. Her mentor was Yashwantrao Chavan, then a towering figure because he was the first chief minister of the newly created state of Maharashtra and later Pandit Nehru’s trusted defence minister. In 1967 she was made deputy minister in the state in the Vasantrao Naik ministry and given the portfolios of public health, parliamentary affairs, tourism. In 1972 she was promoted to the cabinet status. All this while, Chavan’s stars were in ascendance and, as his protege, she too grew in stature in Maharashtra.

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