Venkaiah rules out possibility of third front government

Calling the third front a “parking lot” where parties come and go, former BJP national president Venkaiah Naidu ruled out any chances of the conglomeration of parties forming the government at the Centre after the general elections.

Naidu, who was in the city to take stock of the situation before the party announces its list of candidates for the forthcoming polls, also said on Thursday that parties in the third front are seeing the mirage of forming government. 

Naidu’s scathing attack was targeted not just at the third front constituents but also at the Trinamool Congress, although his attack at the Left was more strident.

“It is a mirage for the third front to form government at the Centre as it had already been tried before and had ended in a failure. It is just like a parking lot where political parties come and go,” Naidu said, adding that the parties in third front neither have any common agenda nor any commitment. “They will fight election against each other and later join together to block the BJP. They have no leader. Everybody wants to become prime minister,” the veteran BJP leader said.  

Training his guns on third front constituents and former BJP allies like Nitish Kumar, Naidu asked how such an alliance can function with so many prime ministerial aspirants. “So, if it comes to power, will there be a rotational PM everyday in a week?” he asked. He noted that the member-parties of the third front are equally responsible for the corruption in the Congress-led UPA because they had been supporting parties in the alliance in both the two terms of the UPA.

Naidu also attacked the AAP, calling it the “B-Team of the Congress”. “The AAP has been discredited after it joined hands with the Congress because they had taken a vow to send Congress leaders to jail for corruption,” he said. He also blamed the AAP for creating tension to stay in the news when asked about the clash between AAP workers and BJP activists at New Delhi.