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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, Shiromani Akali Dal chief Parkash Singh Badal and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will be the proposers for NDA candidate Ram Nath Kovind when he files his nomination for President on Friday.
Besides most BJP and NDA chief ministers and the heads of some other parties supporting his candidature, a special request has been made to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami to be present on the occasion. Both factions of the AIADMK are supporting Kovind’s candidature in the Presidential polls. The TRS chief and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao will also be present. The election is scheduled for July 17 and the counting of votes will take place on July 20. The term of President Pranab Mukherjee ends on July 24.
Besides the constituents of the NDA — which has 48.6 per cent of the total vote value of 10.99 lakh — regional parties such as the AIADMK, BJD, TRS and JD(U) have announced their support to the Dalit leader, making his win an almost foregone conclusion. The TRS has 1.6 per cent of the vote, and the AIADMK holds about 5.4 per cent of the value of votes.
Kovind will thus get an estimated 61 per cent of the vote, and the finally tally may increase depending on how some still-undecided regional parties vote, a BJP source said.
Concerns over JD(U) However, there were last-minute concerns about the JD(U)’s support for Kovind now that Meira Kumar, who hails from the party’s stronghold of Bihar and is the daughter of prominent Dalit leader Babu Jagjivan Ram, has been fielded by the Opposition. The 17 Opposition parties that met on Thursday have made an appeal to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to support Meira Kumar’s candidature.
‘Meira made a scapegoat’ Maintaining that Meira Kumar had been made a “scapegoat” by the Congress, the BJP questioned why the party did not nominate her when it was in a position to get her elected to the highest office.
“When the Congress had the opportunity to elect a Dalit President when they were in power, did they not find Meira Kumar suitable? When the defeat of the Opposition candidate is certain, they have fielded her as a scapegoat. This clearly shows that it has no commitment to elect leaders from marginalised sections to high offices and had decided to field her purely done as a token exercise,” BJP spokesperson GVL Narsimha Rao said.
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