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Talk of Third Front could sabotage Congress, says Moopanar

The move by the left parties and the AIADMK to form a Third Front government at the Centre after the elections appeared to be a clever strategy to sabotage the Congress's chances of forming a new government, Tamil Maanila Congress president G K Moopanar said today.

Asked at press conference whether he thought the statement of CPI-M general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet and other left leaders and AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha, envisaging the formation of a Third Front government, was intended to sabotage the Congress from forming a government, Moopanar said: "I don't know definitely. But it looks that way."

Moopanar said such talks were taking place at a time when elections were only half way through.

The AIADMK and the left parties had teamed up with the Congress in Tamil Nadu. In other states where the CPI-M is not a ruling party, it is having an electoral understanding with the Congress. The talk of a Third Front-led government at the Centre by Jayalalitha comes at a time when relations between the AIADMK and the Congress appears to be strained. There was also no joint campaign by Jayalalitha and Congress president Sonia Gandhi who in fact had to wait for more than an hour at a campaign meeting in Villupuram expecting Jayalalitha.

Moopanar said the talk of forming a Third Front would only strengthen the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies against whom the Congress, the left and other parties had been fighting. There was no possibility of a Third Front forming the government unless the Congress also took part in it, he added. The BJP and the Congress were the leading political parties and no government could be formed without either of them, he said.

No secular front without the Congress would be stable as it had been proved in 1996, he pointed out. Moopanar, who fought against the DMK-BJP led front and as well as the AIADMK-Congress led front in the state, was still hopeful of a tie-up with the Congress in the 2001 assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. It depended on what the Congress would decide, he added. He was not worried whether his party would get seats in the current Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu or not, and would be happy if the TMC polled 40 to 50 lakh votes.

UNI

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