Presidential poll: Opposition working to remove internal divisions

NEW DELHI: Having decided to put up a joint Opposition candidate in the presidential elections, Opposition leaders are now working to overcome fault lines in the Opposition for ensuring larger unity.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury and JDU’s Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav have made an action plan to deploy most acceptable emissaries to woo parties that may not support a joint candidate due to rivalry with another Opposition party.

Sonia Gandhi’s carefully-cultivated goodwill has been redeployed to bring SP and BSP together. The two had extended outside support to UPA I and UPA II, before Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi broke the delicate balance with his illfated alliance with Akhilesh Yadavled SP, angering BSP supremo Mayawati.


The Congress chief will also try to be the bridge between Left parties and Trinamool Congress, who had maintained cordial political working ties with her even during turbulent ties with UPA government.

Rahul Gandhi had ended Congress’ balancing act even here by aligning Congress with the Left Front to fight Trinamool. Sonia Gandhi has already spoken to RJD’s Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh (her way of acknowledging Mulayam as the SP supremo) and Mayawati. She is expected to meet Mayawati, Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee and D MK leader MK Stalin in the next few days.

CPM and JDU leaders, meanwhile, have launched a parallel operation to get the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD on board. BJD is Congress’ traditional turf rival but is likely to be receptive to this time as BJP has become its number one rival in Odisha. After talks with Gandhi and Sharad Yadav, Yechury landed in Bhubaneswar to hold talks with Patnaik on Thursday.

“I will request Naveen Patnaikji to join the ongoing efforts of many Opposition parties to field a joint presidential candidate against theBJP nominee. I will also find out if Patnaik has any candidate to suggest,” Yechury told ET.

Banerjee has already reached out to Patnaik. Sharad Yadav is also working on bringing together the Socialist family, which includes JDU, SP, RJD, RLD, BJD, INLD and JDS.

The Opposition will also reach out to YSR Congress of Jagan Reddy, rival of Congress as well as BJP ally TDP in Andhra Pradesh. Some parties may request Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee, who broke away from the Congress, to talk to Reddy.

Even while the Opposition is keeping a close eye on the delicate power-games in AIADMK, JMM leader Shibu Soren sent an emissary to a senior Opposition leader, offering his party’s backing for the Opposition efforts.

Sonia Gandhi is expected to talk to Soren as well. While Opposition parties, united by their common threat from BJP, know that NDA has the upper hand politically and numbers in the electoral college, they want to put up a united fight to advertise opposition to the BJP ideology and NDA’s policies and use the presidential poll to build a platform for a larger anti-BJP alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Though some of the parties are tempted to do ‘polemics’ with BJP’s uneasy allies such as Shiv Sena, the Opposition camp knows that NDA partners in power will wait for (while subtly bargaining) the BJP to discuss with them its presidential candidate by next month.