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Wednesday 13 June 2012

Presidential polls: NCP, SP hint at backing Pranab

cleanmediatoday.blogspot.com

Presidential polls: NCP, SP hint at backing Pranab

Clean Media Correspondent
NEW DELHI, June 13 (CMC) The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Tuesday said UPA would give a "most senior and honourable" candidate for the presidency, a comment which lent itself to interpretations as political circles refused to see it as an innocuous plug for top aspirant Pranab Mukherjee.
Lobbying turned hectic as the Presidential race entered the final leg, with press conferences by NCP and SP stepping up the pressure. In fact, the ostensible reasons for the press meets raised eyebrows about their true intent as many feeling they were intended to tilt opinion in favour of the finance minister.
Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday invited the press only to tell them that the party had received 300 applications from aspirants for 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
A day later, NCP leader D P Tripathi called reporters to announce that the party had launched "yuvati Congress" under Supriya Sule for empowerment of young women.
The two venues took little time to echo with queries on the presidential election. Tripathi, while saying his party would go by UPA choice, said, "UPA would meet in two-three days of notification and we would give the senior most, honourable leader as President." The "senior most" remark was interpreted widely as referring to Mukherjee. NCP sources said the party was confident that Congress would give its nod for the finance minister.
A day earlier, Yadav merely said SP would wait for Congress to first name its candidate before giving its mind. However, he made it plain that he would like a "political person" and not a "bureaucrat" for the top constitutional position. His oft-articulated position is seen to point at Mukherjee above the diplomat-turned-vice-president Hamid Ansari.
While NCP and SP have made their preference for veteran Congressman obvious in the run-up to election notification, the unending suspense amid reports of in-house opposition to Mukherjee could have nudged them to come out openly in his support.
Sharad Pawar and Yadav have refrained from naming their preference in public but the fit they designed for next occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan appeared tailored to suit the finance minister.
SP sources said the parliamentary board on Monday discussed the President's issue in detail which would be conveyed to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi during consultations. There were indications that the SP and Congress chiefs have already held a round of talks.
Despite the lobbying, NCP and SP are likely to stick with Congress irrespective of whom it picks as the candidate.

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