Pakistan presidential candidate was born in Agra

Once again after the jinxed 2001 Vajpayee-Musharraf talks, the Agra connection in India-Pakistan relations figures again with hopes of a friendlier ambience if Agra-born Pakistani presidential candidate Mamnoon Hussain wins the race.

Once again after the jinxed 2001 Vajpayee-Musharraf talks, the Agra connection in India-Pakistan relations figures again with hopes of a friendlier ambience if Agra-born Pakistani presidential candidate Mamnoon Hussain wins the race.

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Supported by Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Hussain is likely to sail through in the election, now advanced by a week.

Hussain's ancestral house in Nai ki Mandi area in the heart of the city is now a bakery, but old-timers fondly remember him and his relatives. Hussain, who was born in 1940, migrated to Pakistan with his family after partition.

The present occupant of the house, Shubham Soneja, who runs the bakery, is elated to learn that the house belonged to the Hussains.

"Hussain's grandfather ran a shoe business before Independence," said Haji Seemav Alam, a leather trader in Agra.