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KCR to back Opposition’s Yashwant Sinha in presidential elections: TRS leader
TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao KCR abstained from the June 15 meeting of opposition parties on the ground that the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee invited the Congress to the meeting
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is likely to back former Union minister Yashwant Sinha, the joint opposition candidate for the presidential election to be held in July, a senior party leader close to chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) said on Tuesday.
“Yes, we have decided to support the candidature of Sinha,” the TRS member of parliament who is KCR’s close confidant, told HT.
KCR, as the TRS president is popularly called, abstained from the June 15 meeting of opposition parties, on the ground that Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee invited the Congress to the meeting. The TRS chief did not send a representative to the meeting convened by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday for the same reason.
Though KCR was not part of the opposition meetings to decide on the presidential candidate, he has decided that the TRS will support Sinha, who had been a bitter critic of the Narendra Modi government for the last few years.
But a second TRS leader said KCR and Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) Sharad Pawar were in touch on the opposition effort for the presidential elections.
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To be sure, the TRS was among the regional parties that supported the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA candidate Ram Nath Kovind in 2017.
If the TRS sticks to its decision on July 18, its decision will cost the NDA 24,796 votes accounting for 2.30% of the electoral college even though it is not expected to alter the outcome. The BJP-led coalition is within striking distance of a majority in the electoral college which comprises members of Parliament and state assemblies.
The TRS leader cited above said there was talk in the party at one point that KCR could lean in favour of the TRS abstaining from voting in the Presidential election if the candidate was not acceptable to him.
However, with the opposition parties finalising the name of Yashwant Sinha, the chief minister decided to extend support to him, because of the 84-year-old leader’s stature and service to the nation in the capacity of a bureaucrat as well as external affairs and finance minister in the past.
“More than anything else, Sinha has been a bitter critic of Narendra Modi’s economic policies,” the first TRS leader, who declined to be named, said.
The ruling YSR Congres party in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh is yet to take a position on the presidential elections.
Like his Telangana counterpart, chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy too skipped the meeting convened by Mamata Banerjee on June 15 in New Delhi to discuss the issue of a common candidate for Presidential elections. But YSR party leaders expect the party leadership to eventually back the NDA candidate in view of Reddy’s friendly relations with the Narendra Modi government.
The YSRCP, which supported Kovind in the 2017 elections, has 45,550 votes, accounting for 4.22% votes of the electorate college.
