United Progressive Alliance's Presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee will file his nomination papers on Thursday at 11 am in the midst of changing political alignments, with the UPA largely intact while the National Democratic Alliance in considerable disarray as its trusted allies have openly sided with the 'master troubleshooter,' saying Pranab is the best candidate for the country's top job.
On Wednesday Mukherjee called on Janata Dal-United chief Sharad Yadav to thank him for his support. Yadav has signed Mukherjee's nomination papers and made it clear that the JD-U, which is in coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, will support Mukherjee.
Mukherjee also called on Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav who played a key role in ensuring that the senior Congress leader was through in the Presidential sweepstakes.
Mulayam Singh has also signed the nomination papers with Pranab Mukherjee thanking him for his support.
Interestingly, the Shiv Sena, the significant NDA ally, has also announced its support for Pranab Mukherjee, going against the wishes of the BJP. But sources say that so far there has been no approach from the Congress managers involving the Shiv Sena in the preparations for filing the nomination papers.
Sena leaders are feeling left out even as the Congress is approaching many smaller and regional parties for their support.
Congress leaders say they will take the support of the Shiv Sena, but they do not want to send any wrong message, as it would hit at their Muslim vote bank. That is probably the reason why Pranab Mukherjee, when he called up senior BJP leader L K Advani, did not ask him for support for his Presidential candidature.
At a meeting of the Congress's strategy group in the war room on Tuesday night, the party called is allies with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's T R Balu, Muslim League's E Ahmed and National Conference's Farooq Abdullah present to ensure the presence of its MPs in filing the nomination papers.
But Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has continued to oppose Pranab. Interestingly, the West Bengal chief minister has not yet given her support to NDA Presidential nominee P A Sangma either.
But the Congress, which has put its numbers together without Mamata Banerjee, feels it has nothing to lose since it would help the Congress in West Bengal if Mamata goes against the first Bengali to be made the President of India.
The Congress on its part has called on its chief ministers, Congress Legislature Party leaders and Pradesh Congress Committee presidents, Union ministers, MPs and even MLAs for the filing of the nomination papers on Thursday.
Four sets would be filed and in each set there would be 60 proposers and 60 seconders as opposed to the 50 each as per the requirement. This is because the Congress does not want to take any chances and wants to parade its allies and its supporters and show that it is way ahead in the numbers race.
While the position of Jagan Mohan Reddy's YSR congress is not clear as they have not announced their decision, there are a number of smaller parties and groupings which would support Pranab Mukherjee. He has his personal equations with many of them and on the basis of that he was confident that the numbers would go his way.
While Sangma is also expected to file his nomination papers tomorrow, so far there is no word on when and how since every set of nomination papers requires 50 proposers and 50 seconders. He has the backing of AIDMK,BJD and the BJP.
