Finance
According to sources, the opposition parties on Tuesday named Yashwant Sinha as their joint candidate for the July 18 presidential election. “We (opposition parties) have unanimously decided that Yashwant Sinha will be the Opposition’s common candidate for the Presidential elections,” Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said following the meeting.
Sinha quit from the Trinamool Congress ahead of the Opposition meet today, wrote on Twitter saying, “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.”
Following the Opposition meeting, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar declared that Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha will fill the nomination for the upcoming President elections on June 27 at 11:30 a.m. Following the withdrawal of Sharad Pawar, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, and Farooq Abdullah, the TMC proposed the name of its national vice-president Sinha. “We appeal to all political parties to support Yashwant Sinha as president so that a worthy ‘rashtrapati’ can be elected unopposed,” the Opposition said in a statement, according to PTI. TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee, who was also present at the meeting, said, “We are honoured that Yashwant Sinha has been nominated by the unified opposition, he was associated with TMC for a long time. We need to keep our differences aside. We have to find someone who will act as the custodian of the Indian Constitution.”
Several opposition parties attended the meeting, including the Congress, NCP, TMC, CPI, CPI-M, Samajwadi Party, National Conference, AIMIM, RJD, and AIUDF. Today’s meeting was attended by Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh, TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva, CPI-Sitaram M’s Yechury, and CPI’s D Raja. TRS, BJD, AAP, SAD, and YSRCP decided to skip today’s meeting after opting out of the June 15 meeting.
Source:FE
