Presidents and precedent

President Pratibha Patil ends her term in very much the foggy environment in which she began it. When she was chosen as the Congress nominee for Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2007, there were murmurs of dissent. Did this middle-ranking state politician, with a rather undistinguished career, deserve to be India’s President, let alone its first woman President? Stories of her family’s implication in local intrigues in Maharashtra and Jalgaon — Ms Patil’s native town — started to do the rounds. It all seemed very messy.

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