President Elections: Draupadi Murmu will meet BJP lawmakers in Bengal.
NDA presidential nominee Droupadi Murmu is scheduled to visit Kolkata on Saturday and meet BJP MPs and MLAs from West Bengal to seek their support for the July 18 poll to elect the first person of the country.
Droupadi Murmu is visiting various states to garner support from lawmakers and is at present campaigning in her home state of Odisha.
She will arrive in Kolkata around 10 AM on Saturday, BJP sources said.
"Later in the day, she will meet BJP lawmakers at a hotel in the New Town area," a BJP leader said.
However, she does not have any plans yet to visit the assembly or meet Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, he said. Speaker Biman Banerjee also said he does not have any information about any plan of Murmu to visit the assembly.
Last week, the chief minister had said that Droupadi Murmu, a tribal BJP leader from Odisha, could have been a consensus candidate had the saffron party discussed with the opposition parties before fielding her.
Non-BJP parties including the Congress and TMC have named former Union minister Yashwant Sinha as the joint nominee in the presidential election.
The BJP presently has 17 Lok Sabha MPs from West Bengal. Of them, a BJP MP, Arjun Singh, has switched over to the TMC but is yet to resign as a parliamentarian.
The saffron camp has 75 MLAs in the state assembly. However, five of them have switched over to the TMC but are they yet to resign as legislators.