New Delhi,(thestates.news) : Yashwant Sinha, the joint Opposition candidate for the presidential elections, filed his nomination today in Rajya Sabha’s Secretary-General Office in the presence of senior Opposition leaders. Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav, and National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah were among those present during the nomination as a show of strength. Senior Congress leader Praful Patel and Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury were also in attendance, along with other opposition leaders.
According to the Election Commission, the deadline for filing nominations is June 29, and voting will take place on July 18. The ballots will be counted, and the outcome will be announced on July 21. After filing his nomination, Sinha is to lay wreaths at the Gandhi and Ambedkar statues, followed by a press conference at Vijay Chowk and another at the Constitutional Club. Sinha was Minister of Finance under Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar from 1990 to 1991, and again from March 1998 to July 2002 under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was also the Minister of External Affairs from July 2002 to May 2004. Droupadi Murmu, a candidate for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), has already filed her nomination papers.(HS)
