The CPI, one the key left parties, on Sunday admitted that the attempts to forge a Third Front with the regional parties before the lok Sabha polls were “a mistake” as such outfits were more interested in increasing their seat count. He said such a Front can become a possibility only after the polls.
“We need not have gone on trying to work out adjustments with all regional parties. As some of the regional parties wanted to maximise their seats and they were not willing to concede any seat to the left,” AB Bardhan, veteran CPI leader and the main negotiator of the Third Front, said in an interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN’s Devil’s Advocate programme.
Bardhan’s admission comes at a time when both the BJP and the Congress have trashed the Third Front moves and the partners in the umbrella alliance have announced their candidates in their respective strongholds leaving no seat for the left Front.
He said the “premature” failure can be avoided, if the left parties had finalised seat sharing talks with regional partners much earlier. “It is difficult to put it together before the elections, because a Third Front can come about only with a non-Congress, non-BJP parties.
Mostly these are regional parties,” he said.
Bardhan also admitted that he was “disappointed” by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s behaviour and felt “slighted” by her offer of only one seat to the CPI in the State. He repeatedly pointed out that it was Jayalalithaa, who approached the left parties and announced the alliance.
“AIADMK invited us first. When talks started for the seats, they only offered one seat each. So we told them thank, you we don’t want one seat,” he said. When pointed out about his statement that “Jayalalithaa is a potential Prime Minister”, the CPI leader said, “May I say it is she who invited us for talks. I didn’t go to her and it is she who announced to the press that we are having an alliance.”
The Communist leader also spoke about the circumstances in which one of the key left constituents, RSP, severed ties with the CPI(M)-led left Democratic Front in Kerala. Asked whether it was CPI(M)’s mistake not keeping the left unity, Bardhan said, “They should have accommodated (the RSP). There were rooms for accommodating. There are 20 seats in Kerala”.