Opposition meeting tomorrow over presidential election
New Delhi: Opposition leaders will be meeting on Wednesday to discuss the presidential elections scheduled to be held on July 17. Recently, Congress President Sonia Gandhi met various leaders from the Opposition parties to give a tough fight to the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government's candidate for the post of President. Gandhi formed a group to counter the Government's Presidential poll strategy. It is expected that tomorrow the group members- Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge, JD-U leader Shard Yadav, RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, TMC leader Derek O'Brien, Samajwadi Party's Ram Gopal Yadav, BSP's Satish Chandra Mishra, DMK leader R.S. Bharathi and NCP's Praful Patel- would formulate the Opposition's strategy. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is heading the NDA government, has also become active for the Presidential elections. Yesterday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah formed a three-member committee for consultations with the Opposition over candidates for the Presidential elections. The members of the committee are Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley. The BJP earlier postponed its national executive meet scheduled to take place on July 15-16 at Visakhapatnam. The party has decided to do this in view of the Presidential elections. Pranab Mukherjee's term as the President comes to an end on July 24. The Election Commission said the last date of nomination is June 28 and the counting of votes will be taken up on July 20. The President is elected by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both houses of the Parliament, the elected members of the Legislative assemblies of the 29 states and the elected members of the legislative assemblies of the Union Territories of Delhi and Puducherry. Currently, there are 13 vacancies in the Electoral College. —ANI News
