A few days back, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee stirred quite a confusion when she said that the opposition could have considered NDA’s presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu if the BJP had discussed it with them before announcing it.” BJP didn’t discuss with us before announcing their candidate for Presidential elections. They should’ve taken our suggestions…then we could’ve considered,” she added. Banerjee’s comments came because of developments in Maharashtra, Murmu’s chances of winning have become better. “Now we know Draupadi Murmu’s chances are better because of developments in Maharashtra. We’ll go by what opposition parties say,” Banerjee said.
As Mamata’s statement caused a stir in the opposition, opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha said that presidents should be elected unanimously.
In a recent interview, Yashwant said, “I support Mamata Banerjee.” He added, “I have said in the past that there should be no election for the President. Candidates for the presidency should be chosen unanimously. So, Mamata Banerjee did not say anything wrong. The entire ruling party is responsible for the election for the highest constitutional position in the country.”
Incidentally, the opposition is not in a favourable position in terms of numbers in the presidential election. With that in mind, they formed an alliance only to create an atmosphere of anti-BJP unity.
After that, Mamata came to the inauguration ceremony of ISKCON’s Rath Yatra and said, “They (BJP) have not mentioned Draupadi’s name before. If the BJP had said in advance that they were fielding a tribal woman, we would have thought of supporting her.
In the larger interest, we could make a decision with 16 teams. It could have been on the basis of consensus. But the BJP just wanted to know our suggestion.”
At the time, however, Yashwant said the presidential election was not a one-man fight. Rather, the battle of two ideologies. He fought for that political goal even though he was the tenth choice.
Bureau Report
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