New Delhi: Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP and general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Thursday said that the party will abstain from taking part in the Vice-presidential election that is scheduled to take place on August 6. He said that there is no question of supporting the NDA' vice-presidential candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar. He also dropped hints over an apparent disagreement on the Opposition candidate Margaret Alva, saying that the TMC was not kept in the loop while deciding on the nominee.
"Supporting an NDA (VP) candidate doesn't even arise and the way the Opposition candidate was decided, without proper consultation & deliberation with a party that has 35 MPs in both the Houses, we have unanimously decided to abstain from the voting process," news agency ANI quoted Banerjee as saying.
"Margaret Alva (Oppn VP candidate) shares a very good equation with Mamata Banerjee, but the Vice President of the country isn't going to be elected based on personal equations. 85% of our MPs decided that we should refrain from voting," Banerjee added.
Abhishek Banerjee was speaking at the TMC’s annual Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata.
Notably, the BJP-led NDA has named former West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar as its vice-presidential candidate while the Opposition announced former Rajasthan Governor Margaret Alva as their nominee.
Margaret Alva was named the opposition’s vice-presidential nominee on Sunday after a meeting of 18 political parties, including the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party.