UPA rejects Manmohan Singh’s name as Presidential candidate

June 14, New Delhi: Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Thursday met Congress president Sonia Gandhi as Congress made clear that he is still in the race, officials said. UPA today rejected PM Manmohan Singh’s name as president. On Wednesday Trinamool Congress and Samajwadi Party, came out with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s name, along with that of former president APJ Abdul Kalam and former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee as their candidate.

Mukherjee reached Gandhi’s 10, Janpath residence a little after 10 a.m.

The meeting comes after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav virtually rejected Gandhi’s presidential choices Mukherjee and Vice President Hamid Ansari.

Though some Congress sources ruled out the possibility of Singh participating in the presidential race, there was no official response from the party to the odd manner in which SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and TMC leader Mamata Banerjee mentioned the PM name at a joint press conference.

The West Bengal chief minister drove to Yadav’s house from Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s residence where, after the meeting, Banerjee had disclosed to the media that Mukherjee and Ansari were the Congress party’ choices - and in that order.

Later, ignoring both the names, Mulayam and Mamata declared that the PM, Kalam and Chatterjee were their choices, saying any one of them would be acceptable to them. They also made it clear that the names they had proposed were not in order of preference.

Senior ministers P Chidambaram and A K Antony as well as leaders of ally DMK have also met Gandhi at her residence.

News Gathered by India News

Posted by Preeti on Thursday, June 14th, 2012. Filed under Delhi NCR, India News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.