Vice-presidential (VP) candidate Margaret Alva on Friday described the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) decision to not back her as “disappointing” and called for unity as Opposition parties scrambled to paper over cracks in the bloc after widespread cross voting in the presidential election.
Alva’s comments came a day after the TMC said it will abstain from the August 6 VP election because it was not consulted before Alva, a former governor, was picked as the Opposition nominee. Later on Thursday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders said 17 parliamentarians and 126 legislators from the Opposition camp backed eventual winner Droupadi Murmu in the presidential election, underlining deeper rifts in the Opposition camp.
“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.
The hostility has cast a shadow on the chances of Alva in the vice-presidential election, one that NDA’s Jagdeep Dhankhar is almost certain to win.
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. The TMC and the AAP had supported Sinha earlier.
{{/usCountry}}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. The TMC and the AAP had supported Sinha earlier.
{{/usCountry}}But on Thursday, 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 that was carried out at the last moment,” he further added.
Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek O’Brien later told NDTV, “This candidate was cooked up by folks in Delhi, we were given a 10-minute notice... You can’t cook up names and take us for granted, treat us as equals”.
Two Opposition leaders claimed Mamata Banerjee that had earlier assured Congress president Sonia Gandhi that the TMC will support any common candidate of the opposition parties for the vice-presidential election.
“On July 15, around 2.30pm, Sonia Gandhi called Mamata Banerjee to discuss the vice-presidential election. The Trinamool leader conveyed to Gandhi that she doesn’t have any candidate in mind and will support the joint candidate selected by the Opposition parties,” said the Opposition leader, requesting anonymity.
Next evening, after the NDA announced West Bengal governor Dhankhar as its VP candidate, Sonia Gandhi sent a message to Mamata Banerjee around 8.30pm on the vice-presidential election, according to another senior leader. “This time, it remained unanswered,” said the senior leader.
On July 18, when various Opposition parties met at Pawar’s house to finalise the Opposition’s candidate, TMC didn’t attend the meeting. A leader present in the meeting said, “Pawar tried to call Mamata Banerjee but her office said she was busy in a meeting. The Opposition leaders waited for almost half an hour to talk to Bengal CM. But no contact could be established.”
Opposition parties closed ranks in early July ahead of the presidential election but have struggled to come together since the announcement of Droupadi Murmu as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate. First, a number of Opposition parties, such as the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Bahujan Samaj Party, broke ranks to back the former Jharkhand governor. Then, the TMC’s public disavowal of Alva dredged up old memories of hostilities between the regional party and the Congress. And, as results of the presidential election trickled in on Thursday night, it became clear that in some states – notably in Assam, Madhya Pradesh— Opposition lawmakers may have backed Murmu. To be sure, with no whip issued and a secret ballot, it is difficult to say which, or how many, legislators defied the party diktat to vote for a particular candidate.
With general elections about two years away, the presidential and vice-presidential elections were considered a key test for Opposition unity. Though the NDA nominees held a decisive edge in the electoral college, opposition parties had hinted that they would use this exercise to signal their intent to take on the BJP.
But with bitterness out in the open – especially with the Opposition unable to match the symbolism of the NDA elevating the first tribal woman commander-in-chief – and some parties unable to make their own legislators vote for their nominee, that unity now appears elusive. In some states, parties admitted that sections had gone against the stated position of voting for Yashwant Sinha in the presidential poll. “It is now certain that Congress MLAs in Assam cross-voted. Even if we blame every legislator from other opposition parties, it would show that at least 4 of Congress MLAs had cross-voted,” Congress Assam president Bhupen Kumar Borah said.