Presidential elections: AAP to support Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha

The Aam Aadmi Party on Saturday announced that it will support the Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha in the presidential elections.

The Presidential poll is scheduled to be held on July 18 as the tenure of President Ram Nath Kovind ends on July 24.

"AAP will support Opposition's Presidential candidate Yashwant Sinha. We respect Droupadi Murmu but we will vote for Yashwant Sinha," said AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh at a press conference.

"The party's Political Affairs Committee meeting was held under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and unanimously the Political Affairs Committee has decided that the party will support the opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha", Singh added.

With Bhagwant Mann becoming the Chief Minister of Punjab after AAP swept the Assembly polls, the party's number in the Lok Sabha has been reduced to zero. However, AAP has 10 members in the Upper House, along with 62 MLAs in Delhi and 92 in Punjab.

Meanwhile, Sinha has also been backed by Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the presidential polls.

Sinha is contesting against Droupadi Murmu, the candidate chosen by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

Notably, Murmu's vote share has already crossed 60 per cent mark after getting the support from some regional parties like Shiv Sena, BJD, YSR Congress, Shiromani Akali Dal, Biju Janata Dal, Bahujan Samaj Party.