'Will TMC dump Yashwant Sinha' asks BJP to Mamata Banerjee after she shows support to Murmu

|HT|

A day after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said former Jharkhand governor Droupadi Murmu could’ve been the consensus choice of all political parties to be the next President of India, the BJP asked on Saturday if this was a sign Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) would dump Yashwant Sinha, the joint’s opposition’s candidate, in the July 18 polls. “After her failed attempts to take over land of Tribals in Deucha Pachami and insistence that Janajatiya women wear gloves so that she could hold her hand and pose for a picture, Mamata Banerjee realises that her anti-Tribal, anti-women position is untenable,” tweeted Amit Malviya, the BJP’s IT cell chief.

“Will she dump YS?” he added, using initials of Yashwant Sinha’s name.

“The BJP asked for our suggestion but did not tell us who was its nominee. Had we known they were planning to field a tribal lady, a member of a minority community, we could've thought about a consensus. We have great respect for women and people from the tribal community,” Banerjee said at an event on Friday.

Incidentally, Sinha resigned from the Trinamool on June 21 to be nominated as the opposition’s candidate for the presidential polls; hours later, his candidature was formally announced. The former Union minister joined TMC in March last year.

Later that day, the BJP-led ruling NDA announced Murmu as its nominee for the country’s highest office. Both the contestants are former members of the saffron party. The winner will succeed the incumbent, Ram Nath Kovind, and will be the country's 15th President.

(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.)