Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday declined the Presidential candidate proposal of the opposition parties in the upcoming election of the President of India on July 18. Then Trinamool Supremo Mamata Banerjee suggested the names of Farooq Abdullah, Gopalkrishna Gandhi and NK Premachandran as opposition candidates for the election in the meeting in New Delhi.
Pawar later tweeted that he is happy to continue his service for the well-being of the common man, which explains why he said ‘no’ to the proposal. Banerjee invited leaders of opposition political parties last week to produce a confluence of opposition voices’ for the presidential election.
The BJP had already begun their consultation exercise for the presidential election with senior party leader Rajnath Singh speaking to Mamata Banerjee, Congress’s Mallikarjun Kharge and Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav. Rajnath Singh made the calls on the same day the opposition parties sat for a meeting to discuss the same issue. Rajnath Singh also called Janata Dal (United) leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) supremo and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to deliberate upon the presidential polls.
In today’s meeting, it has been decided that the opposition will go for a unanimous presidential candidate. Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel of the NCP, Mallikarjun Kharge, Jairam Ramesh and Randeep Surjewala of the Congress, H D Deve Gowda and HD Kumaraswamy of the JD(S), Akhilesh Yadav of the SP, Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP and Omar Abdullah of the National Conference attended the meeting on Wednesday, while TRS, AAP and BJP stayed away.
