Mamata Banerjee to meet Opposition to decide united candidate for Presidential polls

|HT|

Representatives of Opposition parties, including the Congress, will on Wednesday attend a meeting West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has called in New Delhi to decide on a united candidate and strategy for the presidential election next month. Banerjee last week wrote to 22 non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and eight chief ministers over the election, saying it is a perfect opportunity for all progressive Opposition parties to deliberate on the future course of Indian politics.

She sought the meeting two days after the Election Commission of India on Thursday last announced the presidential election will be held on July 18, six days before President Ram Nath Kovind’s term ends. Votes will be counted on July 21.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is a few thousand votes short of the majority. It hopes to meet the deficit with support from regional parties.

In her letter to the 22 parties, Banerjee called the election monumental as it gives legislators the opportunity to participate in deciding the head of the state and the custodian of India’s democracy when it is going “through troubled times”. She said that a “fruitful confluence of opposition voices is the need of the hour; to echo the deprived and unrepresented communities.” A Congress leader said last week that a united Opposition candidate was badly needed and indications are that it would be a non-Congress nominee.

Hours after Banerjee wrote including to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his Kerala, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Punjab counterparts, Pinarayi Vijayan, Naveen Patnaik, K Chandrashekar Rao, MK Stalin, Uddhav Thackeray, Hemant Soren, and Bhagwant Mann, Sonia Gandhi reached out to Opposition leaders over the election.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said Gandhi spoke to Sharad Pawar, Banerjee, and some other Opposition leaders. He added she has deputed Mallikarjun Kharge to co-ordinate with other leaders in view of her ill health owing to Covid-19.

Surjewala said the Congress believes the country needs a person as president, who can protect the Constitution, institutions, and citizenry from the “ongoing onslaught by the ruling party”. He said Congress has not suggested a particular name but they owe it to the people to elect a President, who can apply a “healing touch to its fractured social fabric and defend our Constitution”. Surjewala called for a need to rise above differences for the sake of the country and its people. He added discussions and deliberations have to be open-minded. (Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)