Margaret Alva to be Opposition's Vice-Presidential candidate

Former Rajasthan governor and former Union minister Margaret Alva to be joint Opposition's Vice-Presidential candidate, announced NCP leader Sharad Pawar on Sunday."We are trying to contact Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal. Last time they supported our joint presidential candidate," said Pawar.17 parties are on board for this unanimous decision. Our collective thinking is Alva will file VP nomination on Tuesday, he added.Opposition leaders Sunday met at the residence of Pawar in New Delhi to discuss their joint vice presidential candidate for the August 6 poll, with the numbers strongly in favour of the ruling NDA.

The meeting was attended by all major opposition parties including the Congress, Shiv Sena, TMC, Left Front constituents, RJD, SP, and others.Among the attendees were Congress' Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, CPI's D Raja and Binoy Viswam, Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut, DMK's T R Baalu and Tiruchi Siva, SP's Ram Gopal Yadav, MDMK's Vaiko and TRS' K Keshava Rao.The RJD's A D Singh, IMUL's E T Mohammed Basheer and Kerala Congress (M)'s Jose K. Mani were also present.Unlike the presidential election when the opposition camp had announced Yashwant Sinha as their nominee ahead of NDA's Droupadi Murmu, leading to several non-BJP parties including even Congress allies Shiv Sena and the JMM veering towards Murmu.This time the like-minded parties wanted to wait for the announcement of the NDA candidate.West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar has been fielded by the NDA. The announcement was made on Sunday evening.Dhankhar, a Jat leader from Rajasthan, could influence the electoral calculations in Rajasthan and Haryana which go to elections in 2023 and 2024 respectively.The last date for filing of nominations for the VP election is July 19.