Prez poll: Consensus eludes Oppn, Rajnath pushes for common nominee

NEW DELHI: As the Opposition held its first meeting on presidential polls on Wednesday, the ruling BJP reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice for the top constitutional post with senior party leader Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Naveen Patnaik, sources said on Wednesday.

Singh also talked to BJP ally and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati and YSR Congress leader Jagan Reddy.

Singh made the calls to leaders from opposition parties Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Trinamool Congress (TMC), Samajwadi Party (SP), Biju Janata Dal (BJD) among others and enquired from them about their preference for the next President.

Incidentally Kharge, Banerjee, Pawar and Yadav were part of the Opposition meeting on the poll, where the NCP supremo Pawar emerged as the top choice for the combine. He, however, declined the proposal for contesting the poll in which the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has a clear numerical advantage over the Opposition. The opposition leaders asked Singh about BJP-led NDA’s nominee for the presidential election, they said.

Meanwhile, the next meeting of major opposition parties to deliberate on a consensus candidate for the Presidential election is likely to be held on June 20-21 and will be convened by NCP chief Sharad Pawar in Mumbai, senior leaders said Wednesday.

After the first meeting called by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Delhi and attended by 17 parties, the leaders said that it has been decided that a common candidate who will “uphold the democratic ethos of the country” will be chosen as the opposition nominee.

At the next meeting, the parties are expected to come up with names of leaders who could be widely acceptable, they said.

While Banerjee mentioned the names of National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi as other alternatives, senior opposition leaders said that the remark was made in “passing” and “not seriously”.

Former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi was the consensus opposition candidate for the post of Vice President of India in 2017 but had lost to M Venkaiah Naidu in the election.

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