New Delhi: Opposition presidential candidate Yashwant Sinha on Monday filed his nomination papers for the July 18 election, with a host of leaders including Rahul Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Akhilesh Yadav and Farooq Abdullah accompanying him.
Significantly, Telangana Rashtra Samiti leader K T Rama Rao, the son of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao was also present when Sinha filed his papers.
The TRS said it would support the candidature of Sinha in the Presidential election.
'President of @trspartyonline Sri KCR Garu has decided to extend support to the candidature of Sri @YashwantSinha Ji in the election for President of India. Along with our Members of Parliament, I will be representing the TRS at the nomination today,' Rama Rao tweeted. However, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was not represented as Jharkhand's ruling party is yet to decide on whom to support in the presidential poll.
Sinha handed over four sets of nomination papers to Rajya Sabha Secretary General P C Mody, who is the returning officer for the presidential election.
After filing the nomination papers, Sinha paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi and B R Ambedkar at their statues inside Parliament complex.
Sinha, a former bureaucrat and a union minister during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, was decided as the joint candidate for the presidential election on June 21 at a meeting of several opposition leaders.
He is likely to launch his campaign from June 28 from Chennai in Tamil Nadu and will cover the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka as well during his first round of campaigning.
Top opposition leaders including Nationalist Congress Party supremo Pawar, Congress leaders Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Jairam Ramesh and Rajasthan Chief minister Ashok Gehlot, Trinamool Congress's Abhishek Banerjee and Saugata Roy, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's Tiruchi Siva and A Raja, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah, Communist Party of India-Marxist's Sitaram Yechury and Communist Party of India's D Raja, were also present.
Rashtriya Lok Dal's Jayant Chaudhary, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Misa Bharti, Revolutionary Socialist Party's N K Premchandran and Indian Union Muslim League's Mohammed Bashir and NCP's Praful Patel were also present.
The opposition leaders said the presidential election is a fight between two ideologies and not about individuals.
Gandhi said the real fight is between two ideologies -- the hatred of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on the one side and the compassion of all opposition parties on the other.
"We are all unitedly supporting Yashwant Sinha ji. Of course, we are supporting the individual, but the real fight is between two ideologies.
"One ideology of RSS -- anger, hatred and the other of compassion of all the opposition parties who are standing together," he said.
He said the entire opposition is standing with Sinha. TMC's Saugata Roy said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has extended her full support to Sinha, who is the joint opposition candidate.
"It is not a fight between two individuals only, it is a fight between two ideologies -- between communalism and secularism and authoritarianism versus democracy. And I think under the circumstances, Yashwant Sinha is the best candidate," Roy said while noting that he is a former IAS officer, former union minister of Finance and External Affairs.
"On a person-to-person basis, Sinha is far better. All opposition parties are fully supporting him. The Congress, DMK, socialist parties and Left parties are supporting him. I think it is a rainbow-coloured coalition of best values," the TMC leader said.
Yechury said it is not a question of identity politics. "We respect Droupadi Murmu ji, but it is contest of ideologies," he noted.
—PTI