New Delhi: Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha will file his nomination for the upcoming presidential polls on Monday. Millennium Post has learnt that leaders from almost all major opposition parties will be part of the delegation that will accompany Sinha during his nomination filing. Interestingly, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), which did not participate in the opposition meeting, will now be part of the delegation.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, TMC leaders Abhishek Banerjee, Saugata Roy, and Santanu Sen will also join the delegation along with leaders of Congress, SP, RJD, CPI, CPI-M, and others.
The delegation will visit the Rajya Sabha Secretary General's office at Parliament in the afternoon. At 12.15 PM, Sinha will file his nomination papers, following the garlanding of Gandhi and Ambedkar statues at the Parliament premises. Later, Sinha will address a press conference at Vijay Chowk along with the opposition leaders.
Former IAS officer and a veteran politician, Sinha has been a vocal critic of the Modi government. He was a senior leader of the BJP and has served as the finance minister and foreign minister under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. His disagreement with the Modi government and BJP on several issues led to his resignation from the party in 2018. Later, in 2021, he joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and became its national vice-president.
As an opposition presidential candidate, he promises to raise his voice for farmers, workers, unemployed youth, women, and all marginalized sections of society if he wins the election. Earlier, he also said that the presidential election is much more than a personal contest and is a step towards resisting the authoritarian streak of the government. He also said that this election is a message to the people of India that there should be resistance to these policies. Sinha also said that BJP, under PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, is following an 'undemocratic and dangerous' path. Sinha was selected as the presidential candidate at a meeting of several opposition parties, including Congress, NCP, TMC, CPI, CPI-M, Samajwadi Party, National Conference, RJD, and AIUDF. Initially, during the opposition parties meeting at the Constitution Club on June, 15, Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had proposed NCP chief Sharad Pawar's name as the presidential candidate of the non-NDA front, however, the senior politician declined the proposal. Later, National Conference leader and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and Mahatma Gandhi's grandson and former West Bengal governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi's names were also proposed, but both of them declined.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, reading a joint statement after the meeting, had said, "We are happy to announce that we have unanimously chosen Yashwant Sinha as the common candidate of the opposition parties for the presidential election, which will take place on July 18, 2022."