Mamata, Yechury meet Pawar to discuss candidate for President

New Delhi: NCP supremo Sharad Pawar on Tuesday met Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury to deliberate on the issue of Presidential elections, a day ahead of Mamata's opposition meet.

Mamata Banerjee has called a meeting of opposition parties on Wednesday (June 15) to discuss strategy for a joint opposition candidate for President.

Yechury along with D. Raja of the CPI and P.C. Chacko of the NCP met Pawar where NCP leader Praful Patel was also present. After the meeting, Yechury said, "I have been informed that Sharad Pawar has refused to become an opposition candidate but have discussed some names and those are under considerations."

Pawar said in a tweet, "Mamata Banerjee called upon me at my residence in Delhi today. We had a detailed discussion on various issues related to our country."

Meanwhile, the Congress has asked three leaders -- Leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, Jairam Ramesh and Randeep Singh Surjewala to be present in the meeting called by Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday. NCP, Shiv Sena and other parties have also nominated their representatives for the meeting.

Sources have said that Mamata Banerjee is keen to field Yashwant Sinha, a former BJP leader while major opposition block wants Sharad Pawar as their candidate. The opposition wants a candidate who can win away the fence sitters like the BJD headed by Naveen Patnaik, the TRS of K. Chandrashekhar Rao and the YSRCP of Jagan Mohan Reddy. All of them command votes which can disturb BJP's prospects provided all the opposition parties come together and vote for the joint opposition candidate.

The BJP is also calculating its numbers and is banking on the smaller parties to fill up its difference of votes in the elections.

In the electoral college of around 10.86 lakh votes for Presidential polls, the BJP and its alliance partners in the NDA are a little short of the halfway mark.

To comfortably cross the halfway mark, the BJP is banking on Naveen Patnaik and Jagan Mohan Reddy. With the support of either of the two, the BJP candidate will comfortably win the election but the saffron party is trying to increase its votes with the support of other smaller and non Congress opposition parties.