Hyderabad: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) MPs will sign as proposers and seconders for joint Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha for filing nomination for the Presidential election. As per the Election Commission norms, a candidate desiring to contest the Presidential election would need 50 MPs or MLAs as proposers and 50 others as seconders.
Party sources said TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao who decided to support Sinha asked his party MPs to sign as proposers and seconders along with other non-NDA parties.
The President is elected by an Electoral College comprising MPs and MLAs of all states. There are 776 MPs and 4,033 MLAs in the Electoral College and the total value of all these votes is 10,86,431. The TRS has 17 MPs, nine in the Lok Sabha and seven in the Rajya Sabha, and 103 MLAs and the party's total vote value stands at 24,796.
There was undecided whether the TRS would take part in the Presidential election or not after Chandrashekar Rao skipped the non-NDA parties meeting convened by Mamata Banerjee in Delhi last week to finalise the joint Opposition candidate for the Presidential poll on the ground that the Congress was also invited for the meeting. The party further stated that it wanted to maintain equidistant from both the BJP and the Congress.
However, Chandrashekar Rao changed his stance after NCP chief Sharad Pawar convened the non-BJP parties meeting in Delhi on Tuesday which was also attended by Congress leaders and succeeded in bringing a consensus on fielding Yashwant Sinha as joint Opposition candidate.
Although the TRS stayed away from Pawar's meeting, Pawar called Chandrashekar Rao over the phone and sought his support for Yashwant Sinha to project 'opposition unity' against the BJP. Chandrashekar Rao readily agreed and decided to support Yashwant in the Presidential election, scheduled for July 18.
Against this backdrop, Chandrashekar Rao asked his party MPs to sign on Yashwant's nomination papers as proposers and seconders, sources added.
