The Trinamool Congress will abstain from participating in next month's vice presidential polls, party MP and general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said Thursday. Cracks in the opposition front that named Yashwant Sinha as the presidential candidate - in a race is now set to lose given Droupadi Murmu has 71% of the votes after two rounds - seem to have widened after apparent discord over vice presidential nominee ex-Rajasthan governor Margaret Alva.
"The question of supporting 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 to abstain from the voting process," Banerjee said.
Alva was named the opposition front's vice presidential nominee on Sunday after a meeting of 18 political parties, including the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party.
READ | Opposition names Margaret Alva as Vice President candidate
The Trinamool - the second-largest opposition force - was absent. NCP boss Sharad Pawar said Banerjee had suggested Peoples Democratic Party leader and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti’s name.
"Most of the opposition have extended support... We tried to get in touch with Mamata Banerjee but she was busy with a council," Pawar said later.
{{/usCountry}}"Most of the opposition have extended support... We tried to get in touch with Mamata Banerjee but she was busy with a council," Pawar said later.
{{/usCountry}}"Margaret Alva has a good equation with Mamata Banerjee but vice president of the country cannot be elected based on personal equations. So the party has certain issues which were left to MPs to decide… 85 per cent said we should abstain from voting," Banerjee said today.
The Trinamool, Congress and NCP, in addition to other parties, worked together to decide on Yashwant Sinha as the candidate.
This was after offers to former Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, National Conference boss Farooq Abdullah and Pawar were turned down.
LIVE UPDATES: 2022 presidential election - Murmu v Sinha
The BJP-led NDA has named ex Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar - with whom the Trinamool has a fiercely antagonistic relationship - as its candidate.
Banerjee was speaking at the Trinamool's annual Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata.
Earlier at the same event, chief minister Mamata Banerjee predicted defeat for the BJP in the 2024 election and that it would be 'swept away from power'.