CPI-M, CPI not to project Front's PM candidate

As BSP nursed hopes that its supremo Mayawati will be quickly named as Third Front’s prime ministerial candidate, two Front constituents-- CPI-M and CPI-- today said there was no need to settle the leadership issue till the completion of general elections.

As BSP nursed hopes that its supremo Mayawati will be quickly named as Third Front’s prime ministerial candidate, two Front constituents-- CPI-M and CPI-- on Friday said there was no need to settle the leadership issue till the completion of general elections.

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CPI General Secretary AB Bardhan and CPI(M) polit bureau member MK Pandhe said their parties were not for projecting anyone as the prime ministerial candidate before the elections.

“The Third Front will not project anyone as its Prime Ministerial candidate during electioneering,” CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan told reporters in Bhubaneswar, a day after the Left and some regional parties joined hands to cobble up a Third Front as an alternative to combines led by Congress and BJP.

Echoing his views, Pandhe said in New Delhi that the question of prime ministerial candidate would be taken into consideration only after the elections. “This has been our view from the beginning,” he told reporters in New Delhi.

The remarks of the senior Left leaders assume significance as it came a day after senior BSP leader Satish Chandra Mishra said his party’s objective was to make party chief Mayawati the prime minister.

The comments by the Left leaders came just two days before the dinner meeting Mayawati is hosting in New Delhi on Sunday for the leaders of the fledgling alliance where the likelihood of the Uttar Pradesh chief minister making a bid to be made the Front’s prime ministerial candidate is not being ruled out.