JOIN USYashwant Sinha may not travel to Bengal, Jharkhand to campaign for his Presidential bid
Opposition nominee Yashwant Sinha is unlikely to travel to West Bengal to campaign for his Presidential bid as the Trinamool Congress, the party to which he belonged to and that sponsored his candidature, finds itself in a spot after the BJP-led NDA named Droupadi Murmu, a tribal, as its candidate.
For the same reason, Sinha also is likely to skip a journey to his home state Jharkhand, where UPA ally JMM, a tribal dominated party, is veering to support Murmu. Jharkhand was initially planned to be his first stop of campaign on June 24 but JMM’s dilemma prompted a change in plans.
Sources said Sinha may skip some other states too where Opposition parties are not enthusiastic about hosting despite offering support to him. However, Sinha will continue his campaign in other parts -- Uttar Pradesh on Thursday and Gujarat on Friday. He will also head to Jammu and Kashmir though it does not have an Assembly, on July 9 as a "mark of solidarity" with Kashmiri people.
A rethink in Sinha’s campaign team about travelling to Kolkata came after Mamata’s remarks that Murmu could have been a “consensus candidate” had the BJP consulted her nomination with the Opposition. Mamata is also learnt to be not enthusiastic about Sinha’s visit, as it could upset her political calculations in tribal dominated districts.
Trinamool has conveyed to Opposition leaders that Mamata will take care of her party’s votes for Sinha, who resigned as Trinamool’s National Vice President on the insistence of parties like the Congress and CPI(M) before filing nomination for the July 18 polls, sources said.
Mamata was pitching for Sinha as the joint Opposition candidate and finally managed to push his name after senior politicians Sharad Pawar and Farooq Abdullah and former Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi declined the offer to contest.
However, BJP choosing a tribal changed the game for Mamata, who cannot ignore a sizable population of tribals in Bengal. Murmu belongs to the Santhal tribe, which accounts for around 80 per cent of the tribals in Bengal.
Sources said Mamata may not want to be seen as aggressively opposing a tribal. Trinamool Congress has regained support of tribals in the 2021 Assembly elections, after losing a substantial chunk to the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls two years earlier. West Bengal has a good number of tribals in Purulia, Junglemahal and North Bengal.
Murmu’s candidature has put the JMM, the ruling party in Jharkhand, also in trouble as it does not want to be seen as opposing a tribal candidate. The JMM was part of the Opposition meeting that decided that they will field a joint candidate.
Earlier, JD(S) had also pledged its support for Murmu, dwindling the numbers for Sinha.
With this, Murmu is likely to get at least 6.35 lakh votes in an electoral college of 10.86 lakh without counting Shiv Sena votes as against Sinha, who could manage to get at least 4.01 lakh.
Murmu's vote could further increase if she gets the whole Sena votes, and in that scenario, her tally could touch 6.66 lakh or 61.41 per cent of the total votes, while Sinha's vote will fall to around 3.80 lakh. At least 39 Sena MLAs and 15 MPs, who have a total vote value of 17,500, are likely to vote for Murmu.