Murmu reaches Kolkata, to meet Bengal BJP lawmakers on Tuesday

Murmu met legislators of neighbouring Sikkim at Siliguri

ITDC INDIA EPRESS/ITDC NEWS R NDA presidential nominee Droupadi Murmu will meet BJP MPs and MLAs of West Bengal on Tuesday to seek their support for the July 18 election.

After meeting legislators of neighbouring Sikkim at Siliguri in the northern part of West Bengal earlier on Monday, she arrived in Kolkata at around 8 PM, BJP sources said.Murmu is visiting various states to garner support from lawmakers.

"In the morning of July 12, she will first visit the ancestral house of Swami Vivekananda in the city, following which she will meet BJP lawmakers at a hotel at around 10 AM," a BJP leader said.Murmu was initially scheduled to visit Kolkata on July 9, but the programme was cancelled in the wake of the one-day national mourning as a mark of respect to former Japanese premier Shinzo Abe who was assassinated in the island nation on the previous day.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee 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.