Congress May Call For Mid Term Poll

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<b>Third front sees Delhi hope, not BJP</b> <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy and Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh were seen closeted in Parliament’s central hall for much of this week after it became clear that the cracks in the UPA had deepened with Laloo Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan parting ways irrevocably.

The trio — reportedly unhappy with the Centre for their own reasons — worked on the calculation that the time was “ripe” to put in place a “third front” government, propped up by the BJP. George Fernandes was seen as the “perfect” candidate to head it.

Their hopes surged after Laloo Prasad became bitter for being “done in” by the Congress in Bihar, Sharad Pawar for not getting his man as Maharashtra chief minister and the DMK because a central Congress minister had needled its chief M. Karunanidhi with his “casteist” remarks and because of a suspicion that the Congress was out to split the party and take away the PMK and the MDMK. To top that, the Left was restive with the Congress’s reforms agenda.

But the three excluded the Left and Laloo Prasad from the oust-UPA blueprint and were looking at <b>a non-Congress, non-Bahujan Samaj Party government</b>, which, they claimed, had the numbers if the BJP agreed to back it. The BJP, they added, was all too willing to play ball.

The BJP had a more pragmatic take on the scenario. Sources said while <b>the gubernatorial controversies in Panaji and Ranchi had “chipped” away at Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh’s images and restored to the BJP the “moral ground” </b>it had lost after the Lok Sabha polls, there was no “real threat” to the Centre — “at least not for a while”.

The party’s assessment was that even if Paswan and Shibu Soren left the UPA, it would be safe numerically. “If you recall, the NDA followed the same trajectory. Smaller parties like the NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) and Ajit Singh’s Indian National Lok Dal walked out. While we had the numbers, the underpinning was slightly weakened,” said a BJP functionary.

The unravelling would start only if Laloo Prasad is mishandled. “How they tackle Laloo Prasad and how he tackles them has to be watched,” a source said<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->