{"id":338087,"date":"2022-06-20T15:40:24","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T21:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=338087"},"modified":"2022-06-20T23:41:47","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T05:11:47","slug":"gopalkrishna-gandhi-declines-oppn-request-to-contest-prez-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/gopalkrishna-gandhi-declines-oppn-request-to-contest-prez-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"Gopalkrishna Gandhi declines Oppn request to contest Prez polls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Monday declined the opposition leaders&#8217; request to contest the upcoming presidential election and said the candidate for the polls should be one who will generate a national consensus and ensure opposition unity.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, Gandhi said several esteemed leaders of the Opposition have done him the honour of thinking of him for the opposition&#8217;s candidature in the upcoming elections for the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am most grateful to them. But having considered the matter deeply I see that the Opposition&#8217;s candidate should be one who will generate a national consensus and a national atmosphere besides Opposition unity. I feel there will be others who will do this far better than I,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And so I have requested the leaders to give the opportunity to such a person. May India get a President worthy of the office presaged by Rajaji as the last Governor General and inaugurated by Dr Rajendra Prasad as our first President,&#8221; Gandhi said.<\/p>\n<p>The 77-year-old former bureaucrat had also served as India&#8217;s High Commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka. He is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Monday declined the opposition leaders&#8217; request to contest the upcoming presidential election and said the candidate for the polls should be one who will generate a national consensus and ensure opposition unity. In a statement, Gandhi said several esteemed leaders of the Opposition have done him the honour [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":338088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338089,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338087\/revisions\/338089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/338088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}