Margaret Alva reaches out to NDA leaders ahead of vice-presidential polls
Unlike the presidential election, only MPs of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are eligible to vote to elect India’s Vice President.
As Opposition parties scrambled to paper over cracks in the bloc after widespread cross-voting in the presidential election, vice-presidential (VP) candidate Margaret Alva on Sunday reached out to key leaders of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), including Assam chief ministers Himanta Biswa Sarma and Karnataka chief ministers Basavaraj Bommai.
Alva also took charge of her campaign office at 1, Pt Ravi Shankar Shukla Lane on Sunday, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on Twitter.
Responding to Ramesh’s tweet, Sarma said he did speak with Alva, but told her he had no role to play in the vice president’s election. “Smt. @alva_margaret spoke to me this morning. I politely told her that I’m not a member of the electoral college. As such I have no role in the election of Vice President of India,” Sarma tweeted, tagging Ramesh’s post.
Alva, reacting to Sarma’s comment, said she knew what constituted electoral college, and that she had a “nice chat” all the same with an “old friend.” “Mr Sarma is an old friend & we’ve worked together long enough for him to know that after 30 yrs in Parliament, I know what constitutes the electoral college. We had a nice chat though!” she said on Twitter.
On Saturday, the former Rajasthan governor had called on Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party convener Arvind Kejriwal and sought his support for her candidature. Alva and Kejriwal also discussed the current political atmosphere of the nation, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had said in a statement after the meeting. The meeting between Alva and Kejriwal concluded “with both leaders expressing mutual respect and acknowledgement,” the party had said.
On July 18, leaders of 17 Opposition parties decided to field Alva, a former governor of Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. The leaders of the TMC and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were not present. Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar subsequently said he was in touch with both TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and AAP president Arvind Kejriwal and was confident of getting their support.
But on July 21, the TMC demurred.
“The question of supporting the NDA candidate doesn’t even arise and the way the opposition candidate was decided without proper consultation and deliberation with a party which has 35 MPs in both Houses, we have decided unanimously to abstain from the voting process,” TMC’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said.
“We had proposed three to four names and a consultation was in process. But they announced the candidate without discussing and consulting with the TMC. We object to the way the hara-kiri was carried out at the last moment,” he added.
Alva later described the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) decision to not back her as “disappointing” and called for unity as Opposition.
“The TMC’s decision to abstain from voting in the VP election is disappointing. This isn’t the time for ‘whataboutery’, ego or anger. This is the time for courage, leadership & unity. I believe, @MamataOfficial, who is the epitome of courage, will stand with the opposition,” Alva said in a Twitter post.
Her campaign managers, however, maintained that Alva had good personal rapport with all the three chief ministers and has a close tie with Banerjee.
The hostility has cast a shadow on the chances of Alva in the August 6 vice-presidential election, one that NDA’s Jagdeep Dhankhar is almost certain to win.
Unlike the presidential election, only MPs of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are eligible to vote to elect India’s Vice President.
(with PTI inputs)