Third Front not to project PM candidate: Bardhan

As BSP nursed hopes of Third Front pitchforking its supremo Mayawati as its Prime Ministerial candidate, the CPI, a Front constituent, said the new grouping will not project any leader for the top post in the run up to the general elections.

"The Third Front will not project anyone as its Prime Ministerial candidate during electioneering," CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan told reporters here, 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.

Bardhan made it clear the question of Prime Ministership would be taken into consideration only after the elections.

Bardhan's comments 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.

Yesterday, Mayawati's close aide S C Mishra, who was despatched by her to attend the Third Front launch rally in Tumkur district in Karnataka said that BSP's objective was to make her the prime minister. "It is the aim of BSP to make Mayawati prime minister," he said.

Shortly after the launch of the non-BJP, non-Congress front, JD-S supremo and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu have ruled out their becoming Prime Ministerial candidates of the new Front.