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Snubbed
by Jaya, Cong to float Third Front in Pondy
Sanjiv Sinha
New Delhi,
April 17: AFTER AIADMK chief J. Jayalalitha’s snub of the
Congress offer for a Pondicherry poll tie-up, the party’s Central
leadership will now float a ‘‘Third Front’’
in the state with TMC and smaller parties.
The Front will
lead to some paradoxes for the Congress because senior leaders and
the cadre will have to wax eloquent on the AIADMK-led front in Tamil
Nadu and simultaneously oppose it in neighbouring Pondicherry.
Senior leaders
from Pondicherry, including Chief Minister P. Shanmugham and PCC
chief V. Narayanswamy, are expected to arrive here tonight to thrash
out a final strategy with the Central leadership. The leaders will
meet AICC general-secretary in charge of the south Ghulam Nabi Azad
and party chief Sonia Gandhi. The party, which heads the state’s
ruling coalition, feels it had no choice after Jayalalitha rejected
its offer of ‘‘a few more seats’’ from the 20
it planned to contest in the 30-member Assembly.
The offer came
with the condition that the PMK would be outside the government
if the alliance won. The AIADMK chief refused to settle for the
deal because the PMK had earlier walked out of the NDA.
Last week,
Jayalalitha announced 20 candidates from her party and left the
rest to PMK. The Congress and TMC were nowhere in the picture. Congress
sources said that the party may now contest 20 seats in the state
and leave the rest to TMC, the Left parties and a few regional outfits
that have decided to join it.
The Congress
will have a campaign strategy for the state at variance with the
one in Tamil Nadu. There the party is part of the AIADMK-led Front,
which includes the PMK.
The Congress
wanted to rope in Jayalalitha in Pondicherry to avoid a three-cornered
fight between itself, DMK-led combine and AIADMK-led Front. Congress
is dominant in Pondicherry and so refused to share power with the
PMK for its LTTE inclinations. Congress leaders aren’t worried
about forming a Third Front because they feel they have a solid
vote bank.
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