NDA happy over discomfort in UPA camp over Presidential selection

New Delhi, June 14 (UNI) With the ruling UPA candidates for the Presidential polls getting changed almost every day since the race begun, Opposition NDA seems to be enjoying the discomfort in the ruling front.

Leader of the Opposition and senior BJP leader L K Advani said there was no consensus in the ruling front and so far over a dozen names were floated.

''What kind of situation is this?'' he asked after the Left and the DMK refused to back the candidature of Home Minister Shivraj Patil for the top constitutional job.

With the Left parties proposing two more names of veteran Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande and Pratibha Patil, both from Maharashtra, to the prevailing list of Presidential probables, the NDA is unable to hide its glee.

One BJP leader, who did not want to be quoted, said every UPA ally had its own candidate either for President or Vice-President's job while the Congress was looking for Sonia loyalists and not thinking about the country. ''This is one reason, why, the UPA is not even attempting for a consensus candidate,'' he added.

Sources close to Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, however, acted sportively and remarked if Pratibha Patil's nomination was finalised it would be a fight between two people from the Shekhawati region.

''Ms Patils's husband migrated to Maharashtra from the Shekhawati belt and in that case we have laddus in both hands,'' the sources said.

UNI