Third front stands no chance in
Madhya Pradesh
Though political parties under the 'other' category have mustered more than 100 Lok Sabha seats to raise the possibility of forming a third front, that prospect seems a far cry in Madhya Pradesh, where bipolar politics has strengthened further.
In the just-concluded parliamentary poll, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress together polled 90.50 per cent votes, leaving just 9.50 per cent for the rest to share. The Bahujan Samaj Party, which turned out to be the third largest here in terms of mass base, secured just 5.34 per cent. It won not a single one of the 40 seats.
Since the 1989 Lok Sabha election, when the BSP fielded its candidates for the first time in MP, the percentage of votes secured by it has fluctuated. It polled 4.26 per cent votes that year, but took a dip in the 1991 poll to 3.54 per cent. However, the party opened its account by winning the Rewa seat.
The BSP made a remarkable recovery within five years and secured its highest vote share of 8.18 per cent in the 1996 Lok Sabha poll, winning Rewa and Satna seats.
Two years after, the vote share (8.7 per cent) remained more or less the same. But the BSP lost both the seats.
The fortunes of the party, which was trying to emerge as a ''balancing force'' in the power equation at the Centre, ran into rough weather as the party polled only 5.34 per cent votes from 27 constituencies from where it contested. Worse, its state president and legislature leader Dauram Ratnakar (Sarangarh-SC) and another legislator Phool Singh
Baraiya (Gwalior) were relegated to third position.
Just one of its candidates, Ram Lakhan Patel, finished second (in Rewa).
UNI
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