No PM candidate for Third Front:CPI

Amid the Bahujan Samaj Party's keenness to project Mayawati as a prime ministerial candidate, the Communist Party of India on Friday said the Third Front would not name any leader for the top post in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election.

"The Third Front will not project anyone as its prime ministerial candidate during electioneering," CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan told reporters, a day after the Left and some regional parties joined hands to cobble up a Third Front as an alternative to combines led by the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

He said the issue 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.

On the Biju Janata Dal'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.

Communist Party of India - Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury had met Patnaik on March 8 in a bid to persuade him to join the Third Front, while Janata Dal - Secular leader H D Deve Gowda and Chandrababu Naidu of Telugu Desam Party had also spoken to the BJD supremo on the subject.