Amit Shah is on a three day visit to Mumbai, to hold discussions on coming up with a consensus candidate for the upcoming Presidential Polls.
Shah is scheduled to meet Uddhav Thackeray at his residence ‘Matoshree’ in suburban Bandra on Sunday. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray had recommended agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan’s name for the post of President of India when Amit Shah began his tour.
In his statement on Friday Thackeray said that the first choice of the party is RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to be the President. If anyone has a problem with that the second option will be Swaminathan. Thackeray suggested the name of Swaminathan on the basis that he was a man of the farmers and for the works he had done for the farmers. “If farmers need to have an option other than suicide, then Swaminathan should be made the President as he can help farmers,”said Thackeray.
Though Thackeray wanted to hear the names suggested by Shah during their meeting, he was of the opinion that, presidential elections should be held unopposed. But the BJP of Maharashtra is on different ground regarding the opinion of Thackeray. According to the party, Shiv Sena is only disguising to support the NDA candidate, but as seen in the past it likely to ditch BJP candidate.
Shiv Sena had backed UPA’s Pratibha Patil instead of BJP’s Bhairon Singh Shekawat during the 2007 polls and supported UPA’s Pranab Mukherjee in 2012.