It is official-- UPA nominee Pranab Mukherjee will face former Lok Sabha speaker P.A. Sangma in the July 19 presidential election. The BJP Thursday decided to support Sangma but the finance minister appears to be ahead in the race to Raisna Hill with the Left and some sections of the NDA partners favouring him.

On a day of fast-paced developments, the BJP announced it would back Sangma, but within minutes, its key partner Janata Dal-United (JD-U) said it favoured Mukherjee for the top post.

“We all decided P.A. Sangma is the most suitable candidate. So BJP supports P.A. Sangma as its presidential candidate,” Opposition leader in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said.

Appealing to its allies to support Sangma, who quit the NCP to get the support of the BJP, Swaraj admitted lack of consensus in its ranks. “We had two candidates, (former president) A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Sangma. As Kalamji decided not to contest, so the second one was Sangma,” she said.

“We held several formal and informal meetings, but a consensus could not be achieved. Two of our constituent parties are still not in favour of it, but we have decided we need to back a candidate,” she said.

Apart from appealing to the NDA allies to support him, Sangma also asked TMC and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who opposes Mukherjee, to back him. Banerjee is yet to make up her mind.

In the same breath, Sangma also clarified that he was “not a candidate of a single party, but of the national tribal front”- an attempt to woo smaller parties to his cause.

Asked about the fate of his daughter Agatha Sangma, a minister of state in the Congress-led UPA government, he said: “My daughter is a part of the UPA...She is the minister and a very mature person. She has the capacity of taking a decision on her own. I do not have to tell her.”

Describing Sangma, as a candidate of the communal forces, NCP general secretary D.P. Tripathi said: “It is unfortunate that Sangma has become a candidate of the communal forces... the UPA nominee would have a decisive triumph in the presidential poll.”

Observing that the BJP backed Sangma “so there is a contest just for the sake of contest”, Tripathi said the decision showed “bankruptcy” of a party “which had to import its presidential candidate from UPA”.

But it was not only the NDA that had divisions within its ranks on the presidential issue. The four parties in the Left grouping also shared different views.

As expected, CPI-M and  Forward Block supported Mukherjee, while CPI and RSP decided to abstain from voting - a move which will only help Mukherjee.