Arvind Kejriwal's Made A Call On Who To Back For President: Sources

New Delhi: Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party or AAP has chosen a side in the Presidential election - it will back opposition candidate Meira Kumar, said sources. An announcement is expected tomorrow, said AAP sources.

The BJP's nominee, Ram Nath Kovind, is well-placed to win the election on July 17. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won commitments of support for his candidate from a rich assortment of regional parties to accrue a little over 60 percent of the vote.

On the other hand, a league of opposition parties, 17 in all, yesterday met and agreed on former Speaker Meira Kumar as their candidate. Dismissing talk of the election as token, given the BJP's majority, Lalu Yadav and other opposition leaders have said "this is a battle of ideologies", and have urged other "secular" parties to help them defeat Mr Kovind, who is a long-time BJP leader and would be the party's first occupant of the presidential palace of Rashtrapati Bhavan.
 Sources said it is Left leader Sitaram Yechury who has been coordinating with AAP leaders. The Delhi party has 0.8% of the vote in the electoral college that consists of national and state lawmakers.

Meira Kumar and Mr Kovind are both Dalits, but she is from the sub-caste of Jatav Dalits, present in significant numbers in Delhi and therefore important to Mr Kejriwal.

Mr Kejriwal's party was not included at yesterday's meeting in Delhi that was chaired by Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

But its jumping into the opposition's mix comes in the midst of an open war with the BJP at the centre. The CBI has raided more than one of its ministers on charges of corruption (AAP says its leaders are being framed); top bureaucrats have been transferred from Mr Kejriwal's office in what AAP describes as an attempt to dent his governance; Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has sued Mr Kejriwal and other AAP leaders for defamation; and Mr Kejriwal has taken the centre to court to allege that it is, through the Lieutenant Governor's office, appropriating powers and authority that are the domain of the elected government.

However, Mr Kejriwal, 48, has not always gravitated to being part of a larger opposition front. Recently, for example, his complaint about voting machines being gamed in service of the BJP in states like Punjab was not included in a multi-party written protest sent to the President by other opposition parties led by the Congress. Given that it won Punjab, the Congress chose to exclude the state from the regions where voting machines were allegedly rigged.

But before that, Mr Kejriwal was an enthusiastic participant in the opposition's protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he announced his shock decision to ban high-denomination notes.