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Opposition parties to meet today to discuss Presidential candidate
Congress president Sonia Gandhi had taken the initiative to talk to other opposition parties to evolve a consensus on a presidential poll candidate.
Opposition parties will meet in New Delhi on Thursday afternoon to decide their choice of candidate for the July 17 Presidential election.
The meeting will be chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, a day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s party Janata Dal-United (JD-U) decided to support the NDA’s Presidential nominee Ram Nath Kovind.
“Today, in the opposition parties meeting which shall be chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, these issues (Presidential candidate) would be discussed,” Congress leader Mallikarjuna Kharge said.
“Let us see what comes out of the meeting,” he said.
Reacting to the JD-U’s decision to support Kovind, Kharge said, “Nitish Kumar’s party JD-U’s announcement to support Kovind is his decision.”
“Earlier in the opposition parties’ meeting, JD-U leader Sharad Yadav had advised not to decide on the Presidential candidate in a hurry,” he added.
Sharad Yadav was also a member of the sub-committee formed by the opposition parties to decide their presidential candidate.
Sonia Gandhi had taken the initiative to talk to opposition parties to evolve a consensus on a presidential poll candidate. Nitish Kumar was among the leaders who met her and JD-U leaders took part in all meetings of the grouping.
The Left parties are keen to put up a candidate against Kovind in what they call an “ideological battle”.
While some parties have floated the name of former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar as the combined opposition candidate, the other name doing the rounds is of former Maharashtra chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who too belongs to the Dalit community.
