Hamid Ansari vs Najma Heptullah vs Rasheed Masood. For the first time in Independent India all the political groupings have come up with candidates from the same community for a President/Vice-President poll. Works as a CBM (Confidence Building Measure) in the light of Indian citizens coming into the terror focus for the first time.

At the same time, it's sad that all the choices offered are from merely one community. If the idea was to reiterate faith in the Muslim community and dismiss the terror attacks as the act of a misguided few, all parties should have got together and formed a consensus.

The fact that only one community can contest a Vice-President poll is a dangerous trend. The President election this time, despite all the controversy, was not so `exclusive', where one had to belong to a community. But next time, the Vice-President poll trend may well replicate itself in the Presidential polls. Dalit candidate vs Dalit candidate, Muslim candidate vs Muslim candidate, OBC candidate vs OBC candidate.

As far as stature goes, former diplomat Hamid Ansari seems the best bet. And he is not a career politician, in the Kalam mould. But then by the Left's wierd criteria of `political' President and`non-political' Vice-President, he has no business being in the picture when the next Presidential election comes up five years down the line.

Najma Heptullah has enough reasons to kick herself. If she had not hitched herself to the India Shining bandwagon and joined the BJP close to the 2004 elections, she might have ended up in Raisina Hill now and not Pratibha Patil. Now Maulana Azad's grand-niece is destined to contest and lose.