Pranab Mukherjee, Naveen Patnaik and PA Sangma

Bhubaneswar, July 18: Top leaders of the BJD and the Congress, who are keen to ward off chances of cross-voting during the presidential poll tomorrow, here held extensive sessions with their MLAs, many of them first-timers.

Sources said Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who presided over the BJD meet at his residence, sought to motivate the MLAs to cast their votes in favour of the party’s presidential candidate, P.A. Sangma.

Naveen was the first to propose the name of Sangma for the country’s top office and has since been trying to make political capital out of it by projecting himself as the champion of tribal people.

Senior BJD leaders said the chief minister was not willing to take chances as tomorrow’s election would be by secret ballot and it came in the wake of the failed coup against him on May 29. Besides, the party cannot issue a whip to the legislators in the presidential poll.

Sources in the BJD said that as a precautionary measure against cross-voting, party MLAs would go to room No. 54 of the Odisha Assembly, where the voting would take place, in batches of four to five. “Though only one person will enter the polling booth and cast his vote at a time, approaching the polling area in a group would keep fence-sitters under pressure,” said a senior leader.

On the face of it, however, the BJD leadership exuded confidence about the entire legislature party voting en bloc in favour of Sangma, whose election has become a prestige issue for Naveen. “All the 108 party MLAs will vote in his favour,” said Odisha finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadei. His cabinet colleague, Prasanna Acharya, one of the seniormost leaders of the party from western Odisha, appeared to be equally confident.

Sources said that while all the 21 BJD MPs would cast their votes in Delhi, Independent Rajya Sabha member A.V. Swamy, who was elected with the support of the party, would cast his ballot here. The first-time MLAs were today given detailed instructions on how to cast their votes to prevent chances of ballots being cancelled. “Given the past experience, everything has been explained to them in detail. They have been asked to tick only one choice,” said a BJD leader.

The Congress MLAs, too, had a similar session at the party office here. Senior party leader Narsingha Mishra expressed confidence about the MLAs toeing the party line and voting for the UPA candidate, Pranab Mukherjee.

Sources said preparations for tomorrow’s voting had been completed on the Odisha Assembly premises. The preparations were overseen by joint secretary of the Union fertiliser ministry Shyamlal Goel, who arrived here in the morning as the central observer to ensure smooth conduct of the election.