The NDA’s presidential candidate, Droupadi Murmu, will visit Calcutta to campaign among parliamentarians and MLAs ahead of the July 18 election, party sources said on Saturday.

Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal met Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar and other state office-bearers in Calcutta on Friday to discuss the details of Murmu’s visit, whose date is yet to be fixed.

It is a convention for presidential candidates to travel to the states to campaign among legislators. Incumbent President Ram Nath Kovind had not visited Calcutta in the run-up to his election in July 2017. Kovind, the NDA’s choice, came to Calcutta three months later in November.

“We are working out the details of her (Murmu’s) visit. The date has not yet been finalised. She is likely to interact with BJP MPs and MLAs for over two hours,” a source in the party said.

Speaking on Murmu’s impending trip, the source said the BJP now had 70 MLAs and 17 MPs from Bengal. In 2017, the numbers were three MLAs and two MPs. Apart from the BJP’s increased presence in the state, the fact that Murmu is a tribal will help the party send a message to the community, the source claimed.

“In the past few months, many of our elected representatives have defected to Trinamul. Had Murmuji not come to Bengal, Trinamul would have accused the BJP of showing no respect to Bengal’s legislators,” a BJP leader said.