India’s outgoing president ‘will leave with two small suitcases’

INDIA: India’s outgoing President Abdul Kalam says he will leave the sprawling presidential palace where he has lived for the past five years with just “two small suitcases”.

Kalam’s term expires on July 24 and he is set to be replaced by Pratibha Patil, 72, a politician nominated by the ruling Congress party who will become India’s first woman president.

“On the 25th, I will leave Rashtrapati Bhawan (the presidential palace) after having spent five glorious years there,” the Tribune newspaper Friday quoted Kalam, 75, as saying.

“What I have got are two small suitcases. I will go with two small suitcases,” he was quoted as telling the Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi.

Kalam is known as the father of India’s nuclear missile programme and was dubbed the “people’s president” for his populist style but his bid for a second term was rebuffed by Congress because, analysts said, it wanted a party loyalist.

Kalam, son of an illiterate Muslim boatman, was known for his simple lifestyle even while living in the opulent 340-room sandstone palace that housed the viceroy when Britain ruled the subcontinent.

A vegetarian teetotaller who writes poetry in his spare time, Kalam has said he wishes to return to teaching at a university in Tamil Nadu after leaving the largely ceremonial post.

Known for his silver shaggy locks, Kalam became a local hero after overseeing successful tests in 1998 that made the country a nuclear power.

In addressing what the newspaper said was possibly his last function as head of state, Kalam advised his countrymen: “Don’t take gifts that come with a purpose, and build families with character and a good value system.”

Corruption is widespread in Indian politics and bureaucracy. Patil’s election victory is expected to be officially announced today after the opposition conceded its candidate’s defeat.

The voting on Thursday followed heated debate about Patil’s fitness for the job amid charges she protected her brother in a murder probe, shielded her husband in a suicide scandal and was involved in a slew of financial scams.

She has denied any wrongdoing.

Analysts have described the presidential campaign as the most vitriolic in India’s 60 years of independence.

New Delhi, Friday, AFP