Patna, April 25: A little before getting busy with his daughter Anuska’s wedding in New Delhi yesterday, Lalu Prasad lobbed Hamid Ansari’s name in the race for the presidential election. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, along with JD(U) national general secretary Shivanand Tiwary, attended the wedding with all the warmth and benediction.

Political circles — both in the RJD and JD(U) — interpret the growing personal bonhomie between two close pals-turned-arch foes as the “sign” of the efforts on the part of the two to strike some sort of unanimity on the presidential candidate. JD(U) sources revealed that Nitish might be toying with the idea of supporting the Vice-President (Ansari) for the top slot.

On being asked, Shivananad Tiwary told The Telegraph: “Our party has not yet decided on the candidate to support. We are still watching the things to unfold. But Hamid Ansari, also a Muslim and a qualified person, is not a bad choice. Moreover, we have the convention of several vice-presidents elevated to the presidential position. They include S. Radhakrishnan, Zakir Hussain and S.D. Sharma.”

Shivanand’s remarks, apparently, reflect the thinking going on in the JD(U) with 22 Lok Sabha MPs, nine Rajya Sabha MPs and 118 MLAs part of the Electoral College that elects the President. Sources in the JD(U) revealed that the JD(U) was rather quite positive to a Samajwadi Party leader lobbing the former President, APJ Abdul Kalam’s name because of Nitish’s known “soft spot” for the former President.

But SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav soon clarified that his party had “not taken a decision” on the presidential nominee and the JD(U) leadership too, apparently, calculated that Kalam’s claim could not go too far with the Congress “averse” to considering him and also there is no convention of a person getting re-elected as the President after his retirement from the highest position.

“Now, Nitish, who is working hard to woo the Muslims amid talks of the BJP-JD(U) tie getting tensed, can hardly find the reason to object to Hamid Ansari — also a backward Muslim,” said a senior JD(U) source, adding: “Nitish might work rather for a consensus on Ansari’s name.”

Regional satraps, including Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik, were said to be toying with the idea of pushing a “non-Congress” presidential candidate on the Congress, keeping eyes on their prospect in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

But the Congress, sources in the RJD revealed, used Lalu Prasad to lob Ansari’s name to give the impression that it was not the Congress but the RJD chief had proposed the Vice-President’s name. And Lalu, dwindled in his numerical strength and working hard to win Congress’s confidence, did the beat yesterday.

There is a talk of JD(U) president Sharad Yadav joining the presidential race in a section of the party. But the party’s think tank is believed to clearly think that Sharad has not yet “grown tall enough” in stature to fit in the country’s highest slot and he might not be acceptable either to the BJP or the Congress — the main national parties.

Moreover, Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party too might not agree on Sharad as the president, the sources maintained.