Murmu in town, BJP hints at getting more Oppn votes

Murmu, who was visiting Mumbai on Thursday as part of her campaign trail, decided not to call on the Shiv Sena chief at Matoshree, which raised a few eyebrows

Mumbai After Uddhav Thackeray was arm-twisted into supporting NDA’s presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu, the BJP claimed that it would gather more votes for her from the opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) too.

NDA presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu with Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari in the city to meet and interact with the ruling alliance's MPs and MLAs) (Satish Bate/HT PHOTO)

Murmu, who was visiting Mumbai on Thursday as part of her campaign trail, decided not to call on the Shiv Sena chief at Matoshree, which raised a few eyebrows.

On Thursday afternoon, Murmu, who was accompanied by union ministers and BJP leaders, came to Mumbai and met legislators and leaders from the BJP and the Eknath Shinde camp at a five-star hotel near the airport. Chief minister Shinde, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis were also present. Sena’s Palghar MP Rajendra Gavit, who is a tribal, was present at the function as the sole representative of the Thackeray camp.

Fadnavis claimed that Murmu “would get votes that were more than the numbers of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA),” implying that the BJP was looking to wean some Congress and NCP votes for Murmu. During the floor test of the Shinde government, 12 Congress legislators had missed the voting, promoting speculations. Though some of these legislators claimed that they were caught in the assembly lobby as the doors were shut for the polling, the party high command asked senior leader Mohan Prakash to investigate this as well as the cross voting by seven MLAs in the legislative council polls that led to the defeat of its candidate Chandrakant Handore.

On Tuesday, Thackeray had bowed to pressure from his party MPs and announced Shiv Sena’s support for Murmu. This also helped avert the threat of cross-voting from the Shiv Sena’s already-depleted ranks if the party had backed former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, who is the joint nominee of the opposition. Eleven of Shiv Sena’s 19 Lok Sabha MPs had urged Thackeray to support Murmu in the race for president.

This was for the first time in the Sena’s 56-year-old history that the leadership’s hand was forced by its elected representatives when it came to taking such policy decisions.

“The support was an afterthought and came out of helplessness. So, it had little value. The support to Murmu was an attempt to avert a further split in the party. Moreover, we had not asked the Shiv Sena for its support,” said a senior BJP leader.

A Shiv Sena MP admitted that the decision to support Murmu was taken out of “majboori” (compulsion).