Amid BSP's keenness to project Mayawati as a prime ministerial candidate,CPI said that the Third Front would not name any leader for the top post in the run-up to 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. He said the question of Prime Minister would be taken into consideration only after the elections. Bardhan's remark assumes significance as it came a day after Mayawati's senior representative S C Mishra said at the Third Front rally in Tumkur district in Karnataka that BSP's objective was to make her the prime minister. "It is the aim of BSP to make Mayawati Prime Minister," he had said. On BJD's participation in the Third Front,the CPI stalwart said he would meet BJD supremo and Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and discuss the matter with him. CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury had met Patnaik on March 8 in a bid to persuade him to join the Third Front,while JD-S leader H D Deve Gowda and Chandrababu Naidu of TDP had also spoken to the BJD supremo on the subject. While leaders of the eight-party alliance were keen to see BJD on their platform after it snapped ties with BJP,the regional outfit,led by Patnaik,refrained from participating in the rally in Karnataka,keeping open its post-poll option. "The BJD will not participate in any front before the elections though it will enter into seat-sharing arrangement with some parties,including the Left," said party MP Pyari Mohan Mohapatra,considered the main strategist of BJD. BJD,which agreed on seat-sharing with Left parties,NCP and JMM,wants to take a decision on its participation in the Third Front only after the elections,sources said.
