Vice-presidential election: Ex-governor Margaret Alva declared joint Opposition candidate

New Delhi: Opposition parties on Sunday decided to field former Rajasthan governor Margaret Alva as their joint candidate for the vice presidential election.Alva (80) would file her nomination papers on Tuesday, 19 July which is the last date for filing nominations for the 6 August election.Following the news, Alva took to twitter to thank the parties for choosing her:The NDA has fielded West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar as its joint candidate for the post of Vice President.The decision to field Alva was taken at a meeting of opposition leaders of 17 parties at the residence of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar."We have unanimously decided to field Margaret Alva as our joint candidate for the post of Vice President," Pawar announced after the two-hour meeting."Our collective thinking is Alva will file VP nomination on Tuesday," he added. He said a total of 17 parties have unanimously taken the decision to field her and with the support of Trinamool Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, she will be the joint candidate of a total of 19 parties."We are trying to contact Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal. Last time they supported our joint presidential candidate," he said, adding that even JMM is together with opposition parties in this election. Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut said, "We are all together in this election".Among the attendees were Congress' Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, CPI's D Raja and Binoy Viswam, Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut, DMK's T R Baalu and Tiruchi Siva, SP's Ram Gopal Yadav, MDMK's Vaiko and TRS' K Keshava Rao.The RJD's A D Singh, IMUL's E T Mohammed Basheer and Kerala Congress (M)'s Jose K. Mani were also present.The numbers in the electoral college are firmly stacked in favour of the ruling NDA combine.Unlike the presidential election when the Opposition camp had announced their nominee Yashwant Sinha ahead of NDA's Droupadi Murmu, leading to several non-BJP parties including even Congress allies Shiv Sena and the JMM veering towards Murmu, this time the like-minded parties wanted to wait for the announcement of the NDA candidate.The last date for filing of nominations for the VP election is 19 July.With input from agenciesRead all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.