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No Third Front constituent will support Cong, BJP: Naidu

April 12, 2009 15:27 IST
Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu, a key member of the Third Front, on Sunday ruled out any of the constituents of the 10-party combine supporting either the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Congress in forming a government at the Centre after the Lok Sabha elections.

The 58-year-old former Andhra Pradesh chief minster also said that he was not in the race for prime ministership. Naidu said the political landscape in the country is significantly changing and the non-Congress and non-BJP coalition has acquired its own momentum to be able to form government on its own as the country is in for "tripolar polity".

"During the last four Lok Sabha elections, the Congress and BJP have been gaining or loosing only at the cost of each other which goes to prove that they have hit the plateau and they can only come down which is already happening," Naidu told PTI in an interview.

"I see no reason for our friends to go with this party or that party," he said, when asked what is the guarantee that the Third Front constituents will not go with the BJP or the Congress after the elections.

In a wide-ranging e-mail interview, the TDP chief made it clear that he is not in the race for becoming PM and that the Third Front will select a PM candidate in a democratic and amicable manner.

Naidu said the endeavour of the combine is to form an alternative to the Congress and the BJP and not to the United Progressive Alliance and the National Democratic Alliance as there is no permanency to these alliances.

On the reports of differences on the issue of PM candidate in the Third Front, Naidu said that there would be more than one aspirant for the top post in every party and that such issues had been addressed in the past through democratic process of consultation and consensus building.

"Every party will have more than one aspirant for the post of CM or PM. It is welcome in democracy. Such contingencies have been addressed in the past. No party has suffered in the past and no one will suffer in the future," he said.

The Third Front comprises of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the Communist Party of India, the Forward Bloc, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, TDP, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Janata Dal-Secular and other smaller parties.

Naidu, who played a major role in the formation of the United Front Government in 1996, said the Third Front partners have not looked at the issue of PM candidate and have decided to do it after the elections.

"We are matured and responsible enough to handle such issue in a democratic and amicable manner," he said.

Naidu, whose party can play a crucial role in the event of the Third Front forming the government, said with the coalition politics at the national level becoming inevitable, the "arithmetic of it is becoming interesting".

"Our objective is to form a formidable alternative to the Congress and the BJP. This has come to be called as the Third Front in popular language and is an inescapable reality and a continuing concept," he said.

E T B Sivapriyan in New Delhi
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