NEW DELHI: The BJP Parliamentary Board will meet on Saturday to pick its Vice- Presidential candidate. The ruling NDA’s nominee has an upper hand in the election as it enjoys a majority in the electoral college.
Sources said the BJP will also reach out to various parties to seek a consensus over the choice of the candidate. However, the leaders of Opposition parties will meet on Sunday to discuss their own Vice- Presidential candidate.
The Congress has anointed Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, to reach out to all Opposition leaders to find a consensus candidate. The party has already made it clear that it is not fielding a candidate. With the numbers in favour of the ruling bloc, the contest will be a symbolic one.
The members of the BJP Parliamentary Board include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari and party president J P Nadda, among others. Though many names are doing the rounds for the V-P candidature, the frontrunner appears to be Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who resigned as Union Minority Affairs Minister last month.
The electoral college for picking the V-P consists of members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha members. Out of Parliament’s current strength of 780, the BJP has a clear edge as it has 394 MPs, more than the majority mark of 390.