Presidential Polls: It’s Droupadi Murmu versus Yashwant Sinha

Decks were cleared for a high-profile Presidential election on Tuesday with the ruling BJP naming former Jharkhand Governor Droupadi Murmu, a tribal woman from eastern India, and the Opposition choosing former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, who quit the saffron party four years ago after he was sidelined.

Both sides announced the names after hectic discussions – the first to hit the block was the Opposition in the afternoon announcing the name of 84-year-old Sinha while 64-year-old Murmu’s name was cleared after a meeting of BJP’s Parliamentary Board, which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi among others.

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The ruling BJP is comfortably placed in the electoral college with a vote value of 10.86 lakh though it lacks just 2 per cent of votes for majority. It is expected that parties like Naveen Patnaik’s BJD, which rules Odisha and from where Murmu hails from, YS Jaganmohan Reddy-led YSR Congress to back the BJP and bridge the narrow gap in the electoral college.

If elected, she will be the first tribal and second woman to be the First Citizen of the country and would succeed Ram Nath Kovind. Pratibha Patil was the first woman President of the country between 2007 and 2012.

Even as the Opposition accused the Narendra Modi government of not taking any serious steps for a consensus candidate, Nadda announced Murmu’s candidature after an over two-hour-long meeting at around 9:30 PM, six hours after the Opposition named Sinha as their unanimous choice.

BJP president Nadda sought to equate Murmu with former President S Radhakrishnan, citing that both have keen interest in the education sector even as he highlighted that there was unanimity in the party that their nominee should be a tribal, a woman and one from the eastern parts of the country.

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After choosing a Dalit five years ago, the BJP has now chosen a tribal to be its candidate, who is predicted to win easily. It is also seen as a politically calculative move ahead of the Assembly elections in Gujarat where tribals form a substantial part of the electorate.

For the BJP, it is expected that the move could also reap benefits for the party as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, where there are a good number of tribal voters. So far, tribals are said to be supporting the Congress and through this move the BJP seeks to enhance its presence in the tribal belt where the RSS is working to woo voters to the Hindutva fold.

Earlier in the day, the Opposition sought support of “all parties” for Sinha, who was chosen after Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi refused to contest. The announcement came after a meeting of Opposition parties at the Parliament House Annexe, hours after Sinha quit Trinamool Congress as demanded by the Congress, CPI(M) and CPI to project a “non-party” candidate for the electoral battle.

The consensus over Sinha,a former BJP leader who joined Trinamool Congress last year, came after two rounds of hectic consultation on Monday evening and Tuesday morning by Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge, Sitaram Yechury, D Raja, Jairam Ramesh and Praful Patel. In the electoral college, BJP and allies are comfortably placed with numbers close to the majority.