New Delhi: The race for Raisina Hill kicked off on Wednesday with the ruling BJP reaching out to Opposition parties to discuss the possibility of putting up a consensus candidate for the top post. Opposition parties also held a meeting at the Parliament House to discuss presidential polls Wednesday afternoon. The BJD and AAP were not part of the Opposition meet.
The BJP team, which includes Union ministers, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley, will meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday to work out the possibilities of coming up with a consensus candidate for the crucial presidential poll. Mr Naidu is also expected to meet the CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury separately on the same day.
Mr Jaitley would be speaking with Bihar CM and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar while Union home minister Rajnath Singh will hold talks with the Trinamul chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee separately. BJP president Amit Shah had formed the three-member committee on Monday to explore the possibility of a consensus presidential candidate.
Early on Wednesday morning Prime Minister Narendra Modi held parlyes with Mr Naidu and Mr Singh on the forthcoming presidential elections. Mr Modi apparently is in favour of a consensus candidate. After the meeting, Mr Naidu called up both, Mrs Gandhi and Mr Yechury. He also called other Opposition leaders, which include BSP and CPI. Mr Naidu had earlier spoken with Anbumani Ramadoss of the PMK, N. Rangaswamy of the All India NR Congress and Praful Patel of the NCP over the issue.
Cracks in Opposition surface
As the ruling BJP tries to evolve a consensus, cracks seemed to have surfaced in the Opposition camp. During the Opposition meet in which nine parties participated, the Congress and CPM pulled in different directions. While the Congress was in favour of waiting for the meeting with the BJP’s team, CPM wanted the name of a joint Opposition candidate to be announced immediately.
The names being discussed in the Opposition camp include that of Gopal Krishna Gandhi, Meira Kumar and Sharad Yadav.
Regional compulsions also surfaced with the NCP leader, Praful Patel, indicating that if the BJP proposed the name of a Maratha candidate, it would be difficult for his outfit to oppose. Speculation is rife that the BJP could also propose the name of UP governor, Ram Naik.
The Congress and the Trinamul agreed to support BJP if it fielded external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj, as the presidential candidate.
The Opposition parties, which met Wednesday, included the Congress, CPM, NCP, Trinamul Congress, JD(U), BSP, SP, DMK and RJD.
“No names were discussed in the meeting and we all will meet again,” Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, said. The probable names doing the round in the saffron camp for the top post include Jharkhand governor Draupadi Murmu, Kerala governor P. Sathasivam among others.
