India to Elect New President Thursday

With the Communist Party of India-Marxist and Forward Bloc too expressing support for Mukherjee and the Janata Dal-United and Shiv Sena breaking away the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to back him, wide acceptance of his candidature is evident.

Those likely to abstain from voting are Communist Party of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Telugu Desam Party and Telangana Rashtriya Samithi. These parties have around 36,000 votes.

Then, there are around 32,000 votes with smaller parties who have no presence in parliament but have legislators in the states.

Sangma, a former Lok Sabha speaker, was a senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and a member of the Meghalaya assembly till jumping into the presidential race and had to quit both the party and his assembly membership.

He is expected to bag a maximum of 313,000 votes, being supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Biju Janata Dal, AIADMK, Shiromani Akali Dal and Asom Gana Parishad.

The churning witnessed in the country's political space has left both the NDA and the Left Front divided. And, after anxious moments over the last three weeks over Trinamool's indecisiveness, the UPA has emerged a united lot.