REBEL WITH A CAUSE: In 1969, independent candidate Giri (above) defeated the official Congress nominee Reddy with the backing of prime minister Indira Gandhi

The most keenly and closely fought presidential election in the past 50 years was the fifth one, fought between V.V. Giri and K. Neelam Sanjiva Reddy in 1969. So momentous was it that it eventually led to a split in the Congress. On the death of President Zakir Hussain, vice-president Giri took over as acting president. He could have been elevated to the presidency but was not acceptable to the Congress' old guard. As part of their ongoing battle against the then prime minister Indira Gandhi's policy of bank nationalisation, party bosses led by Congress president S. Nijalingappa fielded Lok Sabha Speaker Reddy as candidate for Rashtrapati Bhavan.

When efforts at a compromise failed, Indira got Giri to resign as vice-president and contest as an independent candidate. As acting president, he had signed the bank nationalisation ordinance. As leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, Indira refused to issue a whip to party MPs to vote for the party's official candidate. Instead she sought a "conscience vote". Barring the Jana Sangh, Swatantra Party and Charan Singh's BKD, all major opposition groups too decided to back Giri in the only presidential race that became a full-fledged ideological contest.

Giri won 4,01,515 votes against Reddy's 3,13,548 votes. However, the "rebellious" vice-president failed to win the qualifying quota of first preference votes-50 per cent of the total value of votes polled plus one. Giri got to the mark through second preference votes.

Eight years later, another mid-term presidential election was necessitated by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed's death. This time Reddy became the first president to be elected without a contest. Nominations of 36 of the 37 candidates were rejected after scrutiny. Reddy got the joint backing of the Janata Party government and the opposition Congress.

If Reddy's eventual election was smooth, K.R. Narayanan's in 1997 was almost so. He got elected polling 91.4 per cent of the vote, a record in a presidential election. That was possible because the main opposition party, the BJP, did not field a candidate against the first Dalit presidential candidate. T.N. Seshan, the Shiv Sena-backed independent candidate, lost his deposit.