BENGALURU: It is a straight fight between the NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu and the Opposition’s nominee Yashwant Sinha. As the NDABJP is preparing for the presidential polls scheduled for Monday, the idea is simple, not a single vote should be wasted.
They held a meeting of all chief whips of all 30 states in the party office in Delhi on Wednesday afternoon where the National BJP General Secretary organising B L Santosh, Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Shekhawat, General Secretaries Vinod Tawde, C T Ravi, Bhupendra Yadav, Om Pathak and others have briefed the chief whips and election agents about ensuring that the BJP’s electoral resources are efficiently utilised and that not even one vote is wasted due to absence or due to cross-voting since it is a secret ballot.
Remember during the previous election 17 MP's votes of all parties were disqualified because of technical errors. This is part of the party’s series of drills before the presidential polls to ensure that the NDA nominee is elected as president on 18 July.
The chief whips of the BJP party where they are in power and where they are in the opposition had gathered for this meeting. In turn, the Chief Whips will hold meetings with their elected representatives in their respective states and instruct them about the rules of voting and instruct their party representatives to ensure 100 per cent attendance.
Sources said since this election is by secret ballot and there is no showing of the ballot slips to the party chief whips, the challenge of ensuring there is no cross-voting is much larger. To ensure perfection all the elected representatives will be called to participate in a mock drill on Saturday where they will be tutored in the fine art of “voting”.