|
New Delhi: The Left Front has intensified its bid to revive the defunct Third Front in association with some half-a-dozen regional parties.
Smarting from its failed bid to unseat the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in Tuesday's trust vote, the Left Front is keen to make common cause with regional parties with the aim of projecting the Third Front as a viable option during next year's general elections.
Senior leader of 10 parties yesterday met over breakfast at the New Delhi residence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati to review the fallout of the trust vote and to work out a strategy that would lend credence to their newfound bonhomie.
"The UPA government may have won the (trust) vote in the Lok Sabha on Monday, but has lost the trust of the nation, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) general secretary Prakash Karat said after the meeting.
Karat admitted the new group was only still taking shape but the 10 parties had agreed to form a committee to chart out their future course of action and to improve coordination.
Third attempt
This is the third attempt to revive the Third Front, which had ruled the country for 19 months under the banner of the now defunct United Front from 1996-1998.
The emerging association is being seen as a marriage of convenience considering that the Left Front, which believes in a caste-less society has joined hands with the caste-based BSP and even was ready to prop up Mayawati as the possible replacement as the new prime minister in the event the government fell.
Besides failing to define the group, yesterday's meeting also avoided naming a leader.
The 10 parties who came together yesterday are the four constituents of the Left Front - the CPM, Communist Party of India, All India Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party; the three constituents of the UNPA - the Telugu Desam Party, Indian National Lok Dal and Jharkhand Vikas Morcha; besides three new entrants in the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the Janata Dal-Secular and the BSP.
One of the UNPA's constituents, the Asom Gana Parishad, did not turn up while Telangana Rashtra Samiti leader Chandrasekhar Rao left without attending the meeting.
"We would emerge as a real alternative to the Congress and the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party]," TDP chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu said after the meeting.
|
