File picture of Rashtrapati Bhavan
In what comes as a fresh challenge for the Congress-led UPA government, the Samajwadi Party and the Trinamool Congress may join hands for the presidential polls. Sources tell NDTV that SP leaders have also met with their counterparts in the AIADMK. Reports suggest that former President APJ Abdul Kalam could emerge as a consensus candidate.
Mr Kiranmay Nanda, a Samajwadi Party leader from West Bengal and a Rajya Sabha MP met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday for over an hour. He is believed to have discussed alignment for the Presidential elections to be held in June this year to find a successor to Pratibha Patil. The last day for filing the nomination is May 24.
This could be one more Mamata headache for the Congress, which leads a government at the Centre that needs all its allies and any other support it can gather to make up numbers to put its candidate in the Rashtrapati Bhawan, if it comes to a contest.
The UPA does not have a majority in the electoral college that elects the President - the Congress on its own has 31 per cent of the total votes and the UPA as a whole is estimated to have 40 per cent. The NDA does not have a majority either - the BJP has about 24 per cent on its own and the NDA has 30 per cent votes.
From its huge victory in Uttar Pradesh recently, the SP gets to the table a sizeable number of votes in the electoral college that elects the President of India. Together with the Trinamool, it can make a substantial difference in deciding who will be the next President. Sources say party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and senior leader Ram Gopal Yadav have had several rounds of talk and have even prepared a list of candidates. Other regional parties that would play a role in a contest would be the AIADMK, the BSP and the BJD.
The Congress has also for some time now been looking at Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party as a potential alternative big ally to Mamata Banerjee, who has not been a very supportive partner at the best of times.
The SP has so far been emphatic that it is not considering joining the Congress-led government at the Centre, though it has readily given the UPA government issue-based support, bailing it out of sticky corners a number of times. Though it is very early days yet, any alignment between the SP and the Trinamool on issues could throw Congress plans haywire.
The Trinamool Congress is the Congress' biggest ally, but it has kept it on tenterhooks, challenging and arm-twisting the government it partners on a number of critical issues, often forcing policy rollbacks. Its recent alignment with other regional parties that rule states like J Jayalalithaa's AIADMK and Naveen Patnaik's BJD on the issue of the National Counter Terrorism Centre, an anti-terror organisation that the Centre wants to set up and the states reject as an infringement on the federal structure, has been watched keenly for its political possibilities.
Mr Nanda, the Samajwadi Party leader who met Ms Banerjee in Kolkata, was also a minister in the Left Front government; but after his meeting with the West Bengal chief minister, he was at pains to make clear that his association with the Communist parties was "a closed chapter."
How the President is elected:An electoral college of all elected MPs and MLAs of all state legislatures elect the President. India has 776 MPs and 4120 MLAs. Each MP's vote has a value of 708, an MLA's vote value differs from state to state. Total value of votes of all 4,120 MLAs is 5,49,474. Total value of votes of all 776 MPs is 5,49,408.