UNPA's decision to abstain from Prez poll undemocratic: Swaraj

Mumbai, July 15 (UNI) Senior BJP leader and spokesperson for the NDA supported presidential nominee Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Sushma Swaraj today said the call given by UNPA (Third Force) to their legislators to abstain from the presidential election is ''neither democratically correct nor legally atainable.'' ''Right to vote is the duty and it will be weakening of the democracy when the voters having the total votes value over one lakh will abstain from the presidential election,'' said Ms Swaraj, who arrived here to talk with the BJP MLAs and MPs.

''The decision to abstain amounts to issuing a whip which does not hold good in the Presidential election,'' she said, adding that senior BJP leader and lawyer Arun Jaitley is looking into the matter whether the party can go in court or approach the Election Commission on this issue.

''UNPA is doing what they don't want to do since they are all Congress opposing parties but by abstaining from the Presidential election, they will be supporting Congress,'' she noted.

Commenting on UNPA's other decision of contesting the Vice Presidential election, Ms Swaraj said BJP leader Jaswant Singh had approached their leaders with a proposal that the UNPA should put up a candidate for the Vice President's post and support Mr Shekhawat for President. ''But since that proposal was rejected, now the BJP and its allies will take the decision on July 19 about Vice President,'' she said.

She also denied that BJP was making a campaign against Ms Patil but said that BJP was asking the question merely on the media reports on the UPA candidate.

Ms Swaraj also said that five Vice Presidents contested the Presidential elections without resigning from their post and so it was not essential for Mr Shekhawat to resign.

She also said Mr V V Giri resigned since he was the acting President and not Vice President.

Ms Swaraj claimed Ms Patil was not the first, preferred and natural choice for the Presidential post. She said after Congress and the Left could not reach an agreement on the Presidential nomines between Shivraj Patil and Pranab Mukherjee, Ms Patil's name came up.

''If Congress wanted to have a woman as the presidential candidate, then they should have held talks on these grounds earlier and a woman candidate might have won the election unanimously,'' she added.

Ms Patil's name came up out of the blue and it is unfair to demand votes in her name being a woman, she observed.

UNI