By IANS
New Delhi : Yet another ‘third front’ seems to be folding up within two months as the Samajwadi Party, a United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) constituent, rejected ally AIADMK’s demand to keep distance from the Left parties.
“If some friends in the UNPA feel strongly about our friendship with the CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist), then it is for them to decide. You please go and ask (AIADMK chief) Jayalalitha. We are not willing to leave the Left parties,” Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh told reporters here.
He was responding to Jayalalitha’s statement Sunday criticising him for saying that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government could offer the opposition any informal mechanism to study the implications of the India-US civil nuclear deal.
Jayalalitha, like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), wants nothing less than a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) on the contentious issue.
Amar Singh said: “I don’t want to comment anything about my elders. My friend (AIADMK parliamentary party leader) Maitreyan said I am a small man and he also said I have Jayalalitha’s mobile number. But how can a small man like me talk to big and important leaders like her?
“She said CPI-M/CPI (Communist Party of India) are her enemy. In politics there are no enemies, only adversaries. For instance, BJP is not our enemy. It is only our political adversary.”
Jayalalitha, who was once part of the NDA, wants the newly launched UNPA to be equidistant not only from the Congress and the BJP but also the Left parties as the latter are aligned with her archrival in Tamil Nadu, DMK.