Parking available

When senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu called the Third Front a parking lot in which people park their vehicle,and after their work,they take it away,his prescience was dismissed as sour grapes. But the metaphor has caught on,aptly comparing the temporal opportunism of the Third Front,with visual imageries of cars being pulled out and driven to greener pastures. Even so,when Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao showed up at the NDAs mega-rally in Ludhiana on Sunday,he sent out shock-waves. Not only did he praise iron man L.K. Advani,but in a veiled threat to the Third Front,he promised to rope in others to support the NDA. His appearance eclipsed even the symbolism of the hitherto-recalcitrant Nitish Kumar holding hands with Narendra Modi.

The Left,architects and toll-booth agents at this parking lot,were left scrambling,accusing the TRS of betraying secular parties. But the Lefts own fidelity has been far from certain. From ruling out any arrangement with the Congress and rebuffing earnest overtures from Rahul Gandhi,the Left is now singing a slightly different tune. CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat has modified his customary Congress-baiting to a more cautious Let the election get over first. After May 16,we will think. He even conceded that We can do business with the Congress and ask them to support an alternative secular formation. Then,yesterday,West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee proclaimed that the Congress,no untouchable,may well join the Third Front at the Centre if they could play a meaningful role. (A symbol of the Lefts confused disarray: Bhattacharjee saying that the Lefts position on post-poll alliances was a pre-poll position.) If this be the confidence of the toll-booth agent,where does that leave the car owners?

A political grouping that has to accommodate the aspirations (not to mention egos) of Mayawati,Jayalalithaa,Deve Gowda,as well as a host of regional satraps,was bound to be rocky. Come election results,there was always the chance that cars would leave for one of the two post-poll formations. The TRS driving off even before May 16 makes it even harder to take the Third Front seriously. And if even the Left for ever dreaming up non-aligned movements in India and abroad hints at,horror of horrors,compromise,then what confidence does it inspire in the Third Fronts parking lot?