New Delhi: Yashwant Sinha is all set to contest the presidential election on behalf of the Opposition.

The election to elect a new president will take place on the 18th of next month. In it, the BJP opposed the candidate to be fielded and began the process of fielding a common candidate on behalf of the opposition. In this election, there was an attempt to field Sarabjit. But, he did not agree. A consultative meeting of opposition leaders was held in New Delhi on the 15th. At the time, Farooq Abdullah and Gopalakrishna Gandhi both refused to be considered. The next stage was a consultative meeting of opposition leaders today, chaired by Nationalist Congress Party leader Sarabjit Singh.

At the meeting, Congress' Jairam Ramesh announced that a unanimous decision had been taken to field former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha as the presidential candidate on behalf of 17 opposition parties.

Yashwant Sinha, a retired IAS officer, is the finance minister and foreign minister in the cabinet led by former Prime Minister Vajpayee. He later left the BJP in 2018 and joined the Trinamool Congress in 2021. He was subsequently appointed vice-president of the party. He quit the Trinamool Congress before contesting the presidential election.