President polls: BJP to woo Congress MPs, Shiv Sena MLAs

New Delhi: New Delhi is in the grip of hectic political activity ahead of the Presidential election. The ruling BJP is reportedly making moves to rope in at least 15 MPs from Congress to vote for the BJP Presidential candidate. To ensure a good margin, the party is also planning to woo Congress MLAs from Madhya Pradesh and Haryana and the MVA legislators from Maharashtra to vote for the saffron party candidate, sources said.

With AICC president Sonia Gandhi admitted to hospital before the all party meeting on June 15, sources said that Mamata Banerjee was expected to chair the meeting. It is learnt that the BJP is keen on taking advantage of the situation and get MPs as well as MLAs from the Opposition’s basket to vote for the BJP Presidential candidate. The task is said to have been assigned to union Home Minister Amit Shah with Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and other young brigade helping him out in the exercise.

Source said the BJP was planning to adopt a strategy of targeting at least 15 Congress MPs and 25 MLAs from Shiv Sena among others. “The idea is to ensure that the BJP candidate gets at least 52 per cent over and above the total votes of the Opposition to ensure a huge margin,” sources said.

In another significant development, the BJP is also making efforts to consolidate its numbers within its National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Sources close to the development informed that a two-member committee comprising the saffron party’s national president JP Nadda and union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had been constituted to interact with each of the alliance partners personally.