NDA presidential nominee Droupadi Murmu, who is in West Bengal to seek support for her candidature for the July 18 election, on Tuesday visited the ancestral house of Swami Vivekananda in north Kolkata.
Murmu was accompanied by BJP leaders Suvendu Adhikari, Sukanta Majumdar, Agnimitra Pal and others.
She garlanded the statue of Swamiji at his ancestral home on Shimla Street and paid obeisance to him. Murmu was handed over the books of Ramakrishna Paramhansa by monks of the Ramakrishna Mission.
The NDA presidential candidate signed the visitor’s book kept at the house of Swamiji. She will meet BJP MPs and MLAs of the state later in the day. Murmu is visiting various states to garner support from lawmakers for the presidential poll. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had recently said that 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.
Major non-BJP parties of the country, including the Congress and the TMC, have named former union minister Yashwant Sinha as the joint nominee for the presidential election.
The BJP presently has 17 Lok Sabha MPs from West Bengal. Of them, Arjun Singh has switched over to the TMC but is yet to resign as a parliamentarian.
In the 294-member West Bengal assembly, the saffron camp has 75 MLAs. However, five of them have joined the TMC without resigning as legislators.
