Even as efforts to stitch a Third Front gathered momentum, Narendra Modi today launched a blistering attack on the grouping saying such an alliance would make India a "third rate" country and people should banish them from politics for ever.
Addressing a big rally here, he reserved his fire for the Left parties and their associates trying to form a Third Front saying whenever elections they start talking about secularism and poor and mislead Muslims by practising vote-bank politics.
"Let the third front see which way the wind is blowing. BJP will form the government after coming Lok Sabha elections," he told a big cheering crowd in the Brigade Parade ground.
Taking head-on the Third Front constituents, which met in Delhi during the day, he said "The idea behind Third Front is to make India a third-rate country. Eastern states have remained backward as these are ruled by the third front parties. Time has come to bid farewell to this idea of third front from Indian politics forever."
"In the western states, a third front constituent has never been in power. They have existed in the East and deprived it of development and took the states backward," he said.
Modi's attack assumes significance in the context of 11 non-Congress and non-BJP parties today formally joining hands in Delhi to form a block in Parliament on an anti- communal and a federal agenda. The front includes four Left parties, including CPI(M) and CPI, Samajwadi Party, JD(U), AIADMK, AGP, Jharkhand Vikas Morcha, JD(S) and BJD.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who shares a good equation with Modi, has taken the lead in stitching an alliance with CPI and CPI(M) in Tamil Nadu, which could be a precursor to their coming together on an all-India plank to fight the Congress and BJP.
