Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha filed his nomination on Monday as the common Opposition candidate against the NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu for the July 18 presidential election, a contest described by his supporters as a “battle of ideologies.”
The former BJP leader was accompanied by his wife Nilima and flanked by leaders of at least 15 Opposition parties including Rahul Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Akhilesh Yadav, Farooq Abdullah and KT Rama Rao.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced his support to Sinha hours before he filed the nomination. Rao’s son and senior Minister KT Rama Rao led a delegation of party leaders to be by Sinha’s side in Parliament.
Others present were Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, DMK leaders Tiruchi Siva and A Raja, Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D Raja, Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Jayant Chaudhary, RJD’s Misa Bharti, Revolutionary Socialist Party’s NK Premchandran and Indian Union Muslim League’s Mohammed Bashir and the NCP’s Praful Patel.
There was no representative from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), which had endorsed Sinha’s candidature. Leaders of the Shiv Sena, too, were not present as they were busy with the political crisis in Maharashtra.
Addressing the media after filing four sets of nomination papers, Sinha said he would reach out to his former colleagues in the BJP seeking their support. Sinha said he had reached out to Prime Minister Modi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh for support.
On the occasion, Sinha hit out at the BJP saying that the saffron party under Prime Minister Narendra Modi lacked internal democracy. “The BJP I was part of had internal democracy, the current BJP lacks internal democracy,” he said.
Addressing the media, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said all Opposition parties were united in supporting Sinha’s candidature for the top Constitutional post. “Of course, we support the individual, but the real fight is between two ideologies. One is the ideology of the RSS, that of anger, hatred, and the other of compassion of all the Opposition parties who are standing together,” Rahul Gandhi said.
Sinha served as Finance Minister and External Affairs Minister in the Government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He had resigned from the BJP in 2018 and joined the Trinamool Congress in 2021. He quit the Trinamool Congress before his candidature was announced on June 21.
Sinha described the candidature of his rival NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu, a tribal, as part of “politics of symbolism” and insisted that he would contest the poll on the track record of the Modi Government with regard to the welfare of backward communities and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. “The current President also belongs to a particular community. Does it mean that the community has benefited,” Sinha asked. Sinha said the presidential election was a battle between the ideology of absolute power and that of freedom.