Banerjee announced after a meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi that the ruling party's first choice for president was Finance Minister Mukherjee and the second was Ansari, the current vice president. Barely an hour later, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mamata Banerjee, in a joint press conference, said their preferred choices were former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Manmohan Singh and former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee.