Mamata Banerjee meets Sharad Pawar ahead of Opposition meeting on Presidential polls

NEW DELHI: West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee drove down to NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s residence, soon after reaching Delhi and the two leaders met for half an hour in preparation for the first meeting of opposition parties to deliberate on the Presidential elections scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
The first meeting of opposition parties on Wednesday called by Banerjee, soon after Congress president Sonia Gandhi called her last week, is expected to be attended by at least 16 parties. The first round is likely to discuss names that come up for suggestion rather than take a final call on the opposition nominee. The Congress leadership has communicated that it is not keen on a candidate from the party, and would support whoever emerges as the consensus choice. A second meeting, sources said, is likely early next week, with senior leadership of the parties in attendance.
Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, Jairam Ramesh and KC Venugopal are expected to represent the party. Since Sonia Gandhi is in hospital, she delegated Kharge to be in touch with Banerjee, since the day the presidential polls were announced.
On behalf of JDS, former PM H D Deve Gowda and his son HD Kumara Swamy are expected at the meeting. DMK leaders T R Baalu and Thiruchi Siva, AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh, RJD leaders Tejaswi Yadav and Manoj Jha, NC leader Omar Abdullah, PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, Ramgopal Yadav from SP, Subhash Desai from Shiv Sena, CPI (ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya, Namo Nageshwara Rao from TRS, RLD’s Jayant Chaudhury and Binoy Vishwam from CPI, Elamaram Kareem from CPM are expected to attend the meeting. Apart from Banerjee, TMC will be represented by Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and Yashwant Sinha.
CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI general secretary D Raja also met Pawar on Tuesday, where the NCP veteran is learnt to have asserted that all secular parties should bury the hatchet and work together to engage in serious discussions for the presidential nominee, since CPM had a problem about attending a meeting called by the TMC chief, rather than Congress, which usually takes the lead in getting opposition parties together as the single largest party in Parliament.
While Raja (CPI), it is learnt, was preparing to attend the meeting himself, he took a call on sending Vishwam instead after deliberations with Yechury on the issue. CPM is compelled by its rivalry with TMC in West Bengal, to stay away from a platform hosted by Banerjee. However, both CPI and CPM finally decided to send their representatives to the meeting.
According to a senior leader, if the anti-BJP bloc is able to get BJD and YSRCP on board, the opposition could put up a tough contest against the government nominee. In this regard, the opposition is expected to push for a candidate, political or non-political, known “for his or her commitment to the Constitution and to democracy.”