By PTI
NEW DELHI: NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday reached out to opposition leaders to bolster the presidential poll campaign of combined opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha who is pitted against NDA’s Droupadi Murmu.
Pawar met Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s Bhalchandra Kango and and A D Singh of the RJD, besides Sudheendra Kulkarni, who is managing Sinha’s campaign, and other members of the campaign team.
The meeting, at Pawar’s residence here, comes in the wake of the “lukewarm” response to Sinha’s candidature from Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal after Murmu, a prominent leader from the tribal Santhal community, entered the fray for the July 18 presidential poll.
We all are standing strongly with our candidate Shri Yashwant Sinha to fight for the issues faced by our country, Pawar said on Twitter, sharing pictures of the meeting with opposition leaders.
Sources said Pawar has taken charge of Sinha’s campaign strategy and reached out to opposition leaders for their support to Sinha.
An opposition leader admitted that Sinha’s campaign was not getting the expected response, after the NDA named Murmu as its candidate.
The change of the ruling dispensation in Maharashtra has further dampened the opposition’s spirit.
Soren, who was among the early supporters of Sinha’s candidature, appears to have had a change of heart after Murmu, a fellow Santhal, became the BJP-led NDA’s nominee.
Murmu was welcomed warmly by Soren and his father and JMM founder Shibu Soren in Ranchi on Tuesday.
Last week, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said opposition parties might have considered backing Murmu had the BJP consulted them before fielding her.
BJP’s presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu has better chances (of winning presidential polls) because of Maharashtra development.
If the BJP had asked for our suggestion before announcing the name of Murmu, we could have considered it, too, bearing greater interests in mind, Banerjee had said.
Kejriwal, too, has remained non-committal on supporting Sinha.
At Wednesday’s meeting chaired by Pawar it was decided that Sinha would visit Uttar Pradesh on Thursday, Gujarat on Friday, and Jammu and Kashmir on July 9.
Sinha will visit Jammu and Kashmir, which has no legislative assembly, as a mark of solidarity with its people, Kulkarni said.
The electoral college for the election of the President of India comprises elected members of the two houses of Parliament and legislative assemblies of states and union territories.
The legislative assembly in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir has not been elected yet.
“Even though Jammu and Kashmir does not have an assembly and people there are not participating in the presidential election, the idea is to make a political point that it is very unfortunate that the most important part of the Republic – J&K is deprived of the assembly.
“Sinha’s visit to J&K is to express solidarity with the people of Kashmir,” he told PTI.
Kulkarni said he briefed the opposition leaders on Sinha’s campaign which started from Kerala, followed by Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh.
He asserted the response to the campaign so far has been excellent, especially in Telangana where Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) took out a big procession on a day Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Hyderabad to attend the BJP’s national executive meeting.
Kulkarni said Sinha will later move to other states, including Bihar and Jharkhand, where he hopes the Congress’s allies will back his candidacy.
Jharkhand’s ruling JMM, a Congress ally, has not yet made up its mind about whom to support in the election.
Sinha’s campaign will conclude with a visit to Mumbai on July 17, a day before the presidential election.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi government of Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena combine was ousted from power in Maharashtra a few days back, in a setback to Sinha’s presidential bid.
