There is only one front and Rahul will take final call: Mallikarjun Kharge

Declining to comment on the possibility of a third front formation, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday said that there is only one front and Congress president Rahul Gandhi will take the decision what is to be done.

"I don't want to react on the third front. We are only one front. Rahul Gandhi will take the decision about what is to be done. Sonia Gandhi has already called the meeting. Therefore, the question of the third front doesn't arise as far as I am concerned and my party is concerned," said Kharge here.

Expecting the BJP to fall short of majority considerably, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi is convening a meeting of leaders of non-NDA parties on May 23, the day of the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections, in a bid to keep the saffron party out of power.

Gandhi is understood to have invited leaders of secular parties including NCP chief Sharad Pawa, DMK chief M K Stalin, RJD and TMC for the meeting.

A team of four Congress leaders is said to have been formed for coordinating on the issue, sources said. The team, comprising senior Congress leaders Ahmed Patel, P Chidambaram, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and Ashok Gehlot, is said to be working on ways to stitch a post-poll coalition of like-minded parties, the sources said.

Everybody is working hard to sway fence sitters and the Congress was also seeing a change in the tone of leaders like Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. Rao has recently met Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and DMK chief M K Stalin as part of his efforts to form a third front government.

There were reports that Rao and the chief of YSRCP Congress Jaganmohan Reddy have also been invited but there was no confirmation.

Sources said the Congress party was confident the BJP was not going to get the majority and that is why it wanted to put in place a front to outsmart the rival BJP in case of a hung Parliament. Ghulam Nabi Azad has already stated that the Congress is not keen on the Prime Minister's post.