Pranab Mukherjee set to become next President of India

New Delhi, Jun 15 (PTI) Finance Minister and veteran Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee today appeared set to be the next President with announcement of his candidature by the ruling UPA and endorsed swiftly by supporting parties and indications that he will gather more support ahead. The 77-year-old leader, with 43 years of parliamentary experience, was named by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi at a meeting of the leaders of the Congress and the alliance partners. Within minutes, the Samajvadi Party, which had joined hands with the regional TMC leader Mamata Banerjee to propose the name of A P J Abdul Kalam for the post, broke away and pledged support to Mukherjee, leaving the West Bengal Chief Minister totally isolated. This was followed by another major Uttar Pradesh party BSP, whose supremo Mayawati also extended her support, which will take Mukherjee close to the required vote value of 5.49 lakh in an electoral college consisting of MPs and MLAs with a total vote value of 10.98 lakh. Even counting out TMC, which has a vote value of 48,000, Mukherjee is short of just about 26,000 vote value which is expected to be made up by other parties that may include the Left. Immediately after being chosen, Mukherjee expressed his gratitude to Sonia Gandhi and the other UPA leaders for the honour which he accepted with "all humility". Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lost no time in reaching out to other parties including the main opposition Bhartiya Janata Party to seek support for Mukherjee. After speaking to SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, he called up BJP leaders in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley respectively. The BJP-led NDA, the principal opposition alliance met earlier but failed to come up with a candidate amid reports that JD(U) had reservations over Kalam being supported. Whether the NDA would chose to contest with its own candidate remained a matter of conjecture. PTI