Indian regional leader to take on federal coalition

November 19, 2000
Web posted at: 10:02 AM HKT (0202 GMT)

CALCUTTA, India (Reuters) -- A former chief minister of India's eastern Bihar state said on Saturday his regional party would join a "Third Front" to oust the federal coalition led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP.

"The Rashtriya Janata Dal will support a Third Front to remove the communal BJP regime," the charismatic chief of the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Laloo Prasad Yadav, told reporters at a news conference.

Yadav said India's main opposition party, Congress, was also welcome to join the struggle against the BJP. Yadav did not specify the kind of support the Third Front expected from the Congress.

He said such an alliance would project Marxist leader and former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu as its leader.

"There is no dispute on this aspect," Yadav said, adding he would campaign for the Marxists in the next assembly elections in West Bengal.

Basu, an 87-year-old veteran Marxist, stepped down earlier this month as head of the world's oldest democratically elected communist government.

Basu, who led the eastern state of West Bengal for a record 23 years, had been offered the Indian prime minister's position in 1996 by leaders of the United Front, a grouping of regional and left parties.

But he declined because of opposition from his party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a decision he later called a "historic blunder."

The CPI(M) said last month it had made a mistake and that it would henceforth join a "secular" alliance at the federal level.

On his last day in office, Basu had said he would fight on against the federal Hindu nationalist-led coalition, and added that he had already begun talks to try to dislodge Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's 23-party coalition, which commands around 300 seats in the 545 member lower house.

Vajpayee's BJP and its affiliated Hindu groups are often accused of being biased against minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, despite Vajpayee's assertions that his government defends the interests of people of all faiths.

Basu said several political leaders, including former prime ministers, had approached him to resurrect a so-called "third front," a group of centrist parties that formed a federal coalition in 1996 as an alternative to the BJP and the Congress, whose fortunes have waned in recent years but which with its allies still holds 114 lower house seats.

Yadav said efforts would be initiated to bring together all those parties that had earlier ditched the United Front to ally with the BJP, including the regional Telugu Desam Party.

The TDP rules the southern state of Andhra Pradesh and with 29 seats in the lower house is a key constituent of the federal coalition.

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