The Congress in Odisha on Thursday said it will not support Droupadi Murmu, “daughter of the soil” and NDA nominee in the Presidential elections, claiming that she believes in the ideology of the BJP and the RSS.
The Congress will back Yashwant Sinha, the consensus candidate of several major non-BJP parties, senior leader Narasingha Mishra said.
Chief Minister and BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday urged all members of the state Assembly to extend unanimous support to Murmu as is the "daughter of Odisha".
"We will not back her candidature as she believes in the ideology of the RSS and the BJP. The people of this ideology killed Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress would never support it," Mishra, the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader, said.
The CLP leader said that he knows Murmu in person and their equation is also good, but the party cannot support her.
The Congress has nine MLAs in the 147-member Odisha Assembly and one Lok Sabha MP in the state.
Mishra is described as a "gimmick" Patnaik's appeal to all MLAs of Odisha to support Murmu.
Claiming that the BJP and the BJD are like two sides of a coin, Mishra said, “If the chief minister has so much love for Odisha and Odias, why did he send a non-Odia to the Rajya Sabha? Were there no deserving Odia candidates?”
He was referring to the BJD’s support for BJP candidate Ashwini Vaishnav, a former Odisha cadre IAS officer, in the 2019 Rajya Sabha election. Vaishnaw, now a Union minister, worked as the district magistrate of Cuttack and Balasore during his tenure. He hailed from Rajasthan.
The Congress MP from Koraput, Saptagiri Ulaka, told PTI that as a tribal leader, he welcomes the nomination of a tribal candidate for the Presidential election.
"But, the tribals should be actually empowered. Any symbolic representation will not work,” Ulaka said.
Who is Droupadi Murmu?
Droupadi Murmu is the former governor of Jharkhand, former minister and MLA. Born in 1958 in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha to the Santhal family of Biranchi Narayan Tudu, politics ran in her family from the early days with both her father and grandfather having served as the village headmen under the Panchayati Raj system.
The tribal leader's initial brush with politics began in 1997 after she was elected as the Councillor of Odisha's Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat in 1997. She was named the Vice-Chairperson of Rairangpur the same year.
Murmu has also been a two-time BJP MLA, in 2000 and 2009, from the Rairangpur seat. In the BJP, Murmu moved through the ranks to first become the vice president and later president of the Scheduled Tribe Morcha in Odisha. She was elected as the district president of the Mayurbhanj (West) unit of the BJP in 2010 and re-elected in 2013. She was also named a member of the BJP National Executive (ST Morcha) the same year. She held the post of district president till April 2015 when she was appointed as the Governor of Jharkhand.
Murmu's name was considered for President even in 2017 but Ram Nath Kovind made the cut at that time.
(with PTI inputs)
