Has YSR Congress chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy made up his mind to support the presidential candidate of the ruling BJP-led NDA? If one goes by the previous election in 2017, the answer is yes as Jagan Mohan Reddy backed the NDA candidate Ram Nath Kovind in those elections, despite his rival Chandrababu Naidu being part of the NDA in those days.

The Presidential election is scheduled to be held sometime in July this year. The ruling NDA has 5,30,690 votes against the required 5,49,452 votes. The total electoral college constitutes the members of the both Houses of Parliament and the State Assemblies.

Though the Congress-led UPA has just 2,56,756 votes and is nowhere near to victory, the NDA is running short of 18,762 votes to have a comfortable victory for its candidate. The neutral parties, which are not part of either NDA or the UPA have 2,94,395 votes and placed in a better position than the Congress-led UPA.

Interestingly, the YSR Congress has 43,674 votes with its 28 MPs and 151 MLAs put together. This accounts for 4 per cent of the total electorate of the Presidential election. The NDA is running short of 2 percent of votes, while the YSR Congress has 4 percent of votes on its hand.

The NDA, without the YSR Congress has 49 per cent votes as against 51 per cent of votes required for the election of its candidate with simple majority. The UPA has 24.02 per cent, while others have 26.98 per cent votes. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress has 4 per cent votes from this 26.98 per cent, which would give a comfortable victory to the NDA candidate.

It is in this background Jagan Mohan Reddy is holding a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi this evening. He is scheduled to meet Modi at 4.30 in the evening where the Prime Minister is expected to seek Jagan Mohan Reddy’s support.