FP News Service
Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh)
Amid apprehension of cross voting in Presidential polls about a dozen Congress MLAs were conspicuous by their absence in Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting chaired by state Congress president Kamal Nath and held in a city hotel on Thursday, as per party leaders.
The CLP meeting took place on Thursday to ensure the MLAs cast their votes in favour of the joint Opposition’s candidate for the top constitutional post in the country Yashwant Sinha. The latter who arrived in Bhopal on Wednesday night was present in the hotel on Thursday.
BJP leaders have been claiming for quite some time that several Congress MLAs would vote for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Draupadi Murmu.
On Wednesday, home minister Narottam Mishra even made an appeal to Kamal Nath and Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh to vote in favour of the NDA candidate.
Congress has 96 MLAs in the state legislative assembly against the BJP’s 127, BSP’s 2, SP’s 1 and four independent MLAs.
“We have been asked not to disclose the number of MLAs who attended the CLP meeting or the number of those who were absent”, said a Congress functionary when asked about the absence of the MLAs in the meeting.
A party leader said the party was in touch with the MLAs who couldn’t attend the meeting for some reason or the other.
However, he said, the Congress leadership was prepared to counter any attempts made by the ruling party to poach the Congress MLAs.
State Congress spokesperson Bhupendra Gupta said, “Civic bodies polls are the reason behind several MLAs not being able to attend the meeting. Fact remains that Congress workers have won zila and janpad panchayat polls at many places. Hence, the MLAs wanted to stay in their areas to ensure the BJP doesn’t succeed in its manipulations to get its worker who has been elected as a member of the local bodies, to be elected as the chairman.”
