YSR Congress has announced that the party will support Bharatiya Janata Party’s choice of candidate in upcoming presidential elections. Party supremo Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy told this to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting with him on Thursday, later he issued a public announcement on party’s support to BJP’s candidate.
“We will support any candidate the BJP fields as we have very less differences in opinion. Except for differences on the land acquisition bill and special status for Andhra Pradesh, we share similar opinions on various issues, which we think are pro-people,” he said.
“Also, the BJP has enough support for its candidate to win. Opposing their candidate and fielding another will not make sense,” he added. The move will nearly ensure that the nominee of the ruling camp will get to occupy the Rashtrapati Bhavan in July.’ The votes of Andhra-based outfit along with AIADMK and BJD are being considered crucial given the their presence in both state and central legislature.
Interestingly, Mr. Reddy is the leader of the Opposition in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly where the ruling TDP is a partner of the BJP-led NDA alliance, which is in power at the Centre.
After BJP’s stunning victory in Uttar Pradesh polls it was only marginally short of majority in electoral college comprising of elected members of the two Houses of Parliament and state assemblies. The BJP has also said that it will field an insider in the contest for successor of Paranb Mukherjee
AIADMK is yet to announce its move but reports suggest that BJP is confident of garnering Tamil Nadu’s ruling party’s support. BJD is yet to take a call on the issue. However, party supremo Naveen Patnaik has been approached by Congress along with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee as well as CPM chief Sitaram Yechury.
