Mamata Banerjee to hold Oppn meet over Presidential polls today

The meeting comes one day after Banerjee flew to the national capital to meet with National Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar to try and convince him to be the common opposition candidate for the top constitutional post. However, Pawar turned down the proposal, sources told PTI.

The West Bengal Chief Minister’s push for a joint presidential nominee, to counter the BJP-led NDA’s strength in Parliament, has, however, been criticised by the Left in West Bengal. Miffed at the TMC supremo’s “unilateral” decision to call a meeting for discussion on a joint presidential nominee, the CPI(M) and the CPI on Tuesday said they will send their MPs to the opposition meet to be held here on June 15.

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI general secretary D Raja said the top leadership will not attend the meeting called by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief.

The CPI(M) will be represented in the meeting by the leader of the party in Rajya Sabha, Elamaram Kareem.

Yechury has also written a letter to Banerjee saying such meetings of opposition parties have always followed a procedure of prior mutual consultations to enable the maximum participation of those wishing to join.

“However, in this instance, we received a unilateral communication informing the date, time, venue and agenda. Your letter mentions ‘a fruitful confluence of opposition voices is the need of the hour’. This could have been better achieved if there had been mutual consultation and a proper time to enable party leaders to reschedule their prior commitments to attend such a meeting,” Yechury wrote.