Opposition to field Congress candidate
After a day of political twists and turns, Opposition parties on Tuesday finally decided to field a Congress candidate for the post of Deputy Chairperson after the NCP’s Vandana Chavan decided to opt out after having almost being short-listed. The other option of fielding DMK’s Tiruchi Siva was ruled out after the death of the Party’s founder M. Karunanidhi.
The choice had remained between a Congress candidate and nominated member K.T.S Tulsi which tilted in favour of the Congress when many leaders pointed out that it was the largest Opposition party.
In a day of political twists and turns, the Opposition parties first met in the morning and zeroed in on Ms Chavan. Significantly, the meeting was attended by NCP chief Sharad Pawar himself giving credence to the speculation his party would field their candidate.
However, at a meeting later in the evening, the NCP leadership is learnt to have told the other parties that BJD would support JD(U) candidate Harivansh Narain Singh so it would like to withdraw its candidate.
In another twist, however, the Biju Janata Dal issued a statement barely an hour later saying that it had not yet taken a decision on who to support and will take a call on Wednesday. The statement also pointed out that in the past for presidential polls, the JD(U) had not supported
P.A. Sangma as requested by the BJD. They also said that Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had received calls from Nitish Kumar, Sharad Pawar, Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh seeking support for their respective candidates. Even if the BJD decides to take a neutral stand and abstain from voting, the Opposition will have an edge.
After the evening meeting, Congress sources told this newspaper there was no option but to field a candidate from its own ranks as all others had refused. PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti tweeted that she would vote against the NDA candidate as did YSR Congress Party. Both parties have two MPs each.Similarly, AIADMK made it clear that it would vote for the NDA candidate.
The choice had remained between a Congress candidate and nominated member K.T.S Tulsi which tilted in favour of the Congress when many leaders pointed out that it was the largest Opposition party.