After maintaining a strategic silence over BJP stalwart lK Advani’s resignation and Janata Dal (United) decision to practically part ways with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Friday rubbished all talks of the ‘third front’.
The ruling party in Punjab dubbed the possibility of the third front as an “imaginary exercise”.
SAD, a time-tested ally of the BJP, has termed Advani’s resignation as an “internal matter” of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) - that too after hailing the elevation of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s elevation as the chief of party campaigning committee for 2014 lok Sabha polls.
Even now, despite being an intrinsic part of the NDA, the Akali Dal has maintained that the JDU’s decision to disassociate itself from the Alliance is an “internal matter of the NDA”.
The party had earlier hailed Modi’s elevation and had expressed no reservation if he were projected as the party’s prime ministerial candidate - something that has irked the JD(U) chief and Modi’s Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar.
“SAD, as a responsible constituent of the NDA, has always maintained that we would go with the NDA as far as the choice of Prime Minister was concerned….Regarding the so-called differences with JD (U), it is an internal matter of the NDA,” said SAD chief and Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal.
He also made it clear that the NDA would unitedly fight these elections with the singular aim to defeat Congress party. “NDA is all set to sweep the ensuing lok Sabha polls and ensure freedom of country from the clutches of corrupt Congress party,” he said after talking to the media persons after laying the foundation stone of Rs 24 crore new state-of-the-art building of Amritsar Mun
icipal Corporation on Friday.
He said that writing on the wall was clear that anti-Congress wave was sweeping all over the country as people were itching to push most corrupt Congress party in the pages of history. “It is a hard fact that NDA would form next Government in the Centre and all talk of third front is nothing but an imaginary exercise,” he added.