New Delhi, May 9
The CPM said today that it would favour consensual candidate for the post of President with “impeccable secular credentials.”

“Ideally, it will be good to have a consensual secular candidate...who will have impeccable secular credentials,” party politburo member Sitaram Yechury told reporters here.

To a specific query whether the Left was open to putting up its own candidate, he said all such questions would be answered only after May 11, when the electoral outcome in Uttar Pradesh would be known.

Noting that Uttar Pradesh was a “powerful element”, he said the party would see the composition of the state Assembly as the value of each vote there was 203, compared with 25 of Arunachal Pradesh.