The NDA has altered its line of attack on the Presidential candidacy of Pratibha Patil, the nominee supported by the UPA-Left combine.
Amid the climbdown, UPA targets rival camp’s votes
NEW DELHI: The NDA has altered its line of attack on the Presidential candidacy of Pratibha Patil, the nominee supported by the UPA-Left combine. While NDA will continue to take potshots at Patil and use the “ever emerging revelations to build a strong public opinion” against her, it has decided not to challenge her nomination on legal grounds.
“The issue is actually moral, not so much legal,” a senior BJP leader told DNA. The Opposition coalition had earlier contacted some eminent lawyers to secure a legal opinion on whether Patil’s nomination could be challenged on the basis of media reports that apparently revealed irregularities in some of her business dealings.
The coalition cited a loan default to the tune of Rs17 crore accumulated by a sugar cooperative of which Patil is the founder chairperson. Possibility of legal action was also considered on grounds of liabilities of Pratibha Co-operative Bank, in which Patil is a respondent in a case pending in the Aurangabad bench of the high court.
The NDA’s own legal luminary, Arun Jaitley, apparently advised
the leadership against challenging Patil on legal grounds. NDA’s climb-down comes at a time when the UPA-Left combine has intensified efforts to consolidate their position in the Presidential polls.
Rather than launching a counter campaign against Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the Independent presidential candidate backed by the NDA, the UPA-Left managers have begun a vigorous drive to poach heavily on the rival camp in order to drastically reduce Shekhawat’s vote share. If UPA’s strategy works, then the NDA’s vote share will be reduced from the current 3,52,989 to roughly 3.12 lakh.
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