Indian lawmakers voted yesterday to decide whether the country's next president will be a missile scientist or a lady doctor who was taken prisoner during the Second World War, fighting British colonialists on the side of Japanese troops in Burma.

Voting concluded at Parliament and all state legislatures, but counting will take place on July 18, Thursday, after the sealed ballots arrive in New Delhi.

An announcement of the choice of president  she pointed out.

Historically, Jinnah's Muslim League and the Congress party briefly set aside their political differences when the British attempted to put on trial three INA officers, including P K Sehgal who later married Lakshmi Sehgal &38212 a move which proved unpopular and hastened independence.

Soon after her nomination for the presidency, Sehgal commented that choosing as India's president Abdul Kalam, with his background in strategic weaponry and role in India's May 1998 nuclear tests, would send the ''wrong signals'' to Pakistan and the world.

Kalam countered her charge at a press conference, by saying that he has also worked in the country's space programme and has tried to ''transform the country's technological profile by using science for human resources and augmenting natural resources''.

Kalam's supporters have said that if Sehgal could take up the gun for her beliefs then, by the same token, Kalam could help with the country's missile and strategic defence programme.

Sehgal is exasperated by such arguments — and her thoughts are already on returning to her clinic in Kanpur. ''At least, I can go back with the satisfaction of having been the first ever woman candidate to have contested for president.'' — IPS