Kick-starting the consultations on putting up a joint candidate for the Presidential election, 17 Opposition parties attended a meeting hosted by West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee in New Delhi on Wednesday.
At the end of the 90-minute meeting, the parties came up with a statement expressing their intent to field a common candidate, but no name was finalised.
There was consensus on NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar's name, but he declined the offer. Names of former West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi and former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah are in contention.
The next meeting, hosted by Mr. Pawar, will be held on June 20 in New Delhi to finalise the name. In the meantime, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, Mr. Pawar and Ms. Banerjee have been allocated the responsibility of speaking to heads of all Opposition parties.
Political activist Sudheendra Kulkarni read out the joint resolution: “In the forthcoming Presidential election, which is being held in the year of the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence, we have decided to field a common candidate who can truly serve as the custodian of the Constitution and stop the Modi government from doing further damage to the Indian democracy and India's social fabric.”
With Ms. Banerjee and Mr. Pawar hosting the two rounds of the meetings on the Presidential election, the Congress lost the opportunity to lead the consultations. In fact, Congress president Sonia Gandhi was the first off the block to reach out to the Opposition leaders to build a consensus soon after the Election Commission announced the poll dates for the election.
The Trinamool Congress had sent invites to 22 leaders. The list included eight Chief Ministers (Arvind Kejriwal, Pinarayi Vijayan, Naveen Patnaik, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, M.K. Stalin, Uddhav Thackeray, Hemant Soren and Bhagwant Mann). Leaders representing 17 political parties attended the meeting.
The key absentees included the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). The AAP, according to sources, has said it will wait and see whose name emerges and then decide. The TRS remains non-committal.
Wednesday's meeting was just to bring all parties on one platform. Sources said that no detailed discussions on any candidate was held. At the very beginning, Ms. Banerjee said the Trinamool and other Opposition parties would have wholeheartedly supported Mr. Pawar's candidature, but since he had already rejected the idea further consultations were required.
None of the other leaders mentioned any names, and towards the close of the meeting, Ms. Banerjee herself suggested Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Abdullah. Both these names were discussed at a meeting that CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI general secretary D. Raja had with Mr. Pawar. Left had supported Mr. Gandhi's nomination in the 2017 Presidential elections too, but withdrew his name after the Congress pushed for former Speaker Meira Kumar's candidature. The Left once gain wants Mr. Gandhi in the contest, drawing a Gandhi Vs. Godse binary between the Opposition and the BJP-led government.
‘Misuse’ of Central agencies
Ms. Banerjee, in her opening remarks, expressed concern at the misuse of Central agencies at the behest of the Narendra Modi government, citing the Enforcement Directorate's case against Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. She was also critical of BJP's Kashmir policy, attacking the government for not relocating Kashmiri Pandits even when they were under threat. She decried the government launching multiple attacks on the federal character of the country, reducing the States to mere municipalities. The Governor's office, she said, was being brazenly misused to create blockages for the States.
Mr. Kharge said, the Opposition should be proactive and not reactive. The Congress party, he said, had no particular candidate in mind and was willing to back a candidate acceptable to all. He commented that many parties at the meeting competed with each other in Assembly elections. But that had not prevented this meeting from taking place, because each party had taken a larger national view and come here for a bigger cause.
Obliquely expressing Congress's concern at being outfoxed by the TMC, Mr. Kharge concluded his remarks by saying, “Let me close by saying that we must remain united and disciplined and not score political points against each other. The unity we demonstrate now will have implications going well beyond the Presidential polls”.
The Left parties, represented by Elamaram Kareem (CPI-M) and Binoy Viswam (CPI), said without taking names that other Opposition parties who were not present should also be convinced to join forces.
The meeting was attended by Mr. Kharge, Jairam Ramesh and Randeep Surjewala from the Congress, DMK MP T.R. Baalu, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, RLD president Jayant Chaudhary, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti and senior National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, among others.
