Prez poll: NDA candidate Draupadi Murmu arrives in Patna

Patna, July 5 (IANS) The NDA presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu arrived in the Bihar state capital on Tuesday morning to campaign for the July 18 presidential poll.

During her visit, Murmu is expected to meet the leaders of different political parties and seek their support for her candidature in the presidential poll.

After reaching Patna airport by a special charter aircraft at 10 a.m., she went to the old secretariat to pay tribute to Birsa Munda's statue. At the airport, Murmu was welcomed by BJP state president Sanjay Jaiswal, deputy CM Tar Kishore Prasad and other leaders.

She then went to Hotel Maurya at Gandhi Maidan.

The NDA candidate is scheduled to stay there till 2 p.m and meet CM Nitish Kumar, leader of opposition Tejashwi Yadav, HAM chief Jitan Ram Manjhi apart from top BJP leaders.

At 2 p.m., she will leave for Guwahati.

On Monday, Murmu visited Jharkhand's capital Ranchi and met with JMM chief Sibu Soren, Chief Minister Hemant Soren and BJP leaders and sought their support.

In Bihar, BJP, JD-U, HAM, LJP (Ram Vilash) and RLJP have already pledged their support to Murmu, while RJD, CPI, CPM, CPI (ML), Congress are backing Yashwant Sinha. A