By IANS,
New Delhi : External Affairs Minister and senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee Saturday ridiculed the concept of the Third Front and said the newly launched alliance will lack the numbers to form the next government.
“I do not understand the nomenclature the Third Front is using. What is their objective? Is it to form a non-Congress-non-BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government? Has it ever happened in all these years?” he said.
“We can understand a conglomeration of parties contesting the polls. But to form a government, you need 272 seats (in the 545-member Lok Sabha),” Mukherjee told reporters here.
“The Lok Sabha elections are a means to form a government, not an end,” he added.
The senior leader said it was only once in 1977, when a party other than the Congress, the Janata Party, had got a majority.
He said the Third Front partners were a mix of parties with varying ideologies. “To form a government you need a vision and a programme. They neither have a vision nor a programme. They only have prime ministers.”
Mukherjee was referring to the divergent views within the Third Front on its possible prime ministerial candidate.
The Left and regional parties Thursday launched the Third Front, comprising parties not aligned with the Congress or the BJP, at a rally in Karnataka to fight the Lok Sabha elections.
The Front leaders are meeting here Sunday at Bahujan Samaj Party leader and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s residence amid speculation that she would pitch herself as the prime ministerial candidate of the front.
Mukherjee said the Congress had ruled the country for 45 years on its own and the ruling coalitions from 1989 to 1998 had the support of either the Congress or the BJP.
“I do not know if any of the (Third Front) parties will project (anybody) as the prime minister. I do not know whether they will have a common programme. If it is to make somebody prime minister, then it is like putting the cart before the horse.”
Asked if he was concerned over the emergence of the Third Front, Mukherjee replied: “Not at all.”
Replying to a question, he said: “There is nothing wrong in projecting a prime minister. The Congress is not doing so because we don’t need to, we already have a prime minister.”
Mukherjee, in response to another question, said the Congress “did not have a national alliance with any party because there is no national party” among its partners in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). “We have regional partnerships in several states.”
He parried a question about the possibility of the Left parties backing the Congress after the elections and said: “All I know is that they supported us from outside and helped form the government (in 2004). They were with us till July 2008.”
Asked if the plight of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka will affect the party’s prospects in Tamil Nadu, he reiterated his earlier stance and said: “We are deeply concerned over the issue and conveyed it to the (Sri Lanka) government that a military solution” would not work.
The external affairs minister also reiterated that Pakistan must dismantle the terror infrastructure on its soil and this should be done in a “verifiable and credible” manner.