Hours after 13 Opposition parties unanimously chose former Union minister Yashwant Sinha as their presidential nominee, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) top organisational body, the parliamentary board, held a meeting on Tuesday to deliberate on the party's candidate for the presidential election.
Besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, BJP President JP Nadda, and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan were part of the deliberations at the party headquarters in Delhi.
While there has been no official word from the BJP about its likely candidate, Shah, Singh and Nadda met Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu earlier on Tuesday, sparking buzz that he may be considered for the post of president.
However, sources in the party insisted that not much should be read into the meeting as the parliamentary board will take a final call on the issue. June 29 is the last date for filing the nomination and the election is slated for July 18.
Earlier on Tuesday, 13 Opposition parties chose Sinha as their nominee after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, National Conference (NC) chief Farooq Abdullah, and Gopalkrishna Gandhi opted out of presidential contest. The names of the three of them had surfaced in Opposition's deliberations earlier.
The parties that finalised Sinha included the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, NCP, Rashtriya Janata Dal, among others.
(With PTI inputs)
