Yashwant Sinha, the Opposition Presidential candidate, filed his nomination on Monday in the presence of several Opposition leaders. He was flanked by Sharad Pawar, Rahul Gandhi, Sitaram Yechuri, and many others.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee, Farooq Abdullah from the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference, RLD’s Jayant Sinha, CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury, DMK’s A Raja, CPI’s D Raja, and Telangana Minister and TRS leader KT Rama Rao were among the leaders present at the Parliament when Yashwant Sinha filed his nomination as the consensus candidate from 14 opposition parties.

After filing his nomination, Sinha addressed a press conference. He said: “I’m thankful to all the Opposition parties who came together and chose me as their candidate. It’s being said I was the fourth choice, but I want to say that even if I was at the 10th one, I would’ve accepted it because it’s a big battle.”

He said this is not a fight between two people, but two ideologies. Only the person who can fulfill the responsibility of this post should go to Rashtrapati Bhavan. There is no point in having a puppet president, otherwise, there will be no use for this post.

“The President has been assigned certain responsibilities by the constitution and it is the responsibility of any president in the chair to adhere to them in letter and spirit,” Sinha added.

Launching a scathing attack on the BJP government, he said, “Parliament has been left redundant as most bills are not referred to the standing committee. In earlier days around 75 to 80 percent of bills would go to the standing committee but now only 20-25 percent bills are referred to the standing committee so no discussion and brainstorming over the proposed bills.”

Hailing the Opposition unity in proposing a single candidate for the presidential race, he said this unity would go a long way. “The democracy is under attack and it is our duty to defend it, strong democratic institutions would ensure democracy in the country and not a new parliament building,” he said.

Sinha took a dig at the summons by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to the Opposition leaders saying the ‘government is using Central agencies to target Opposition leaders. “Today, the government is using the agencies not against the criminals, but the Opposition leaders. The Opposition leaders are questioned for more than 50 hours not to investigate, but to humiliate them,” Sinha stated.

Voting for the election of the 16the president is to be held on July 18 and the counting of votes would be held on July 21.

Yashwant Sinha will be touring all the state capitals as his campaign starts on June 28. His first destination would be Kerala.