Opposition chooses BJP’s friend-turned-foe Yashwant Sinha as its presidential nominee

NEW DELHI: Yashwant Sinha was not an unlikely choice for the opposition parties, when they finally announced his name on Tuesday as their unanimous choice for the presidential elections to contest against the NDA nominee, even as he was not their first choice.
Sinha’s name came up after NCP chief Sharad Pawar, NC chief Farooq Abdullah and Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson Gopal Krishna Gandhi turned down the offer to become the rallying point for the opposition camp. But his name had made it to the list of probable candidates brought up by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, right in the beginning as Sinha had for the last few years, honed his credentials as a public baiter of the Narendra Modi government, first by remaining a member of BJP and later by quitting it and joining Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
One of the crucial reasons for Sinha to have made the cut as the opposition’s presidential candidate, seems to be his image of being a “friend-turned-foe” of BJP, a party he had joined in 1993, when party veteran L K Advani had handpicked the former bureaucrat-turned politician, who later went on to become finance and foreign minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government (1999 to 2004) and left saying it is a “threat to democracy.”
Hence, even if the presidential battle does not turn out to be favourable in terms of results, for the Opposition, but it could become a fulcrum for opposition unity at a time when the attacks on the opposition have grown sharp and targeted.
Announcing his resignation from Trinamool Congress on Tuesday, Sinha tweeted: “I am grateful to Mamataji for the honour and prestige she bestowed on me in the TMC. Now a time has come when for a larger national cause I must step aside from the party to work for greater opposition unity. I am sure she approves of the step.”