Third front

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The Third Front ("Third Front") was a party alliance in India that included parties that were neither in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP ), nor in the United Progressive Alliance, led by the Congress Party (UPA) were organized. The Third Front formed shortly before the 2009 general election . After this had largely been disappointing for the parties of the Third Front , the party alliance fell apart again.

history

The formation of the Third Front was announced on March 12, 2009, one month before the general election dates, which ran from April 16 to May 13, 2009. The eight official founding parties were as follows:

On March 12, 2009, Biju Janata Dal (BJD, in Orissa ) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP, especially in Uttar Pradesh ) also joined the alliance, but remained noticeably at a distance. In particular, the party leader of the BSP Mayawati had her supporters proclaim her claim to be the top candidate of the Third Front for prime ministerial office, but this was rejected by the other parties in the alliance. In Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK under its party chairman J. Jayalalithaa concluded electoral alliances with the Tamil regional parties PMK and MDMK , which thereby became de facto members of the Third Front .

The designation "Third Front" expressed the declared intention of the founding parties to offer an alternative to the two large parties, the BJP and the Congress Party and their allies. Political observers rated the Third Front's chances of a possible formation of a government after the election as relatively low. On the one hand, the Third Front represented only part of the strongly fragmented Indian spectrum of parties; on the other hand, the ideological basis of the parties assembled in it was very heterogeneous. The first four above were left-wing socialist-communist parties, the other regional parties. Examples from the Indian past had shown that such heterogeneous alliances and the governments they supported never lasted long, for example the VP Singh government after the parliamentary elections in 1989 or the Gowda and Gujral governments after the parliamentary elections in 1996 .

In the 2009 general election, the Third Front parties performed disappointingly overall. Together they came to 79 out of 543 seats (14.5%). In the previous parliamentary elections in 2004 there were 108 (19.9%). The losses of the CPM (−27 seats) were particularly clear. However, some parties were able to improve their position somewhat (AIADMK: +9, BSP: +2, BJD: +3). Shortly after the election, the Third Front's electoral alliance broke up again and its member parties went their separate ways.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b India's "Third Front". The Economist, March 13, 2009, accessed May 16, 2015 .
  2. ^ Third Front launched to contest Lok Sabha polls. oneindia, March 12, 2009, accessed on May 16, 2015 .
  3. ^ India needs a genuine third front, not an opportunist alliance. Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, March 17, 2009, accessed May 16, 2015 .
  4. ^ Maya to host dinner for third front leaders. rediff.com, March 13, 2009, accessed May 16, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Third Front's prime ministerial candidate after polls, says Chandrababu Naidu. rediff.com, March 15, 2009, accessed May 16, 2015 .
  6. ↑ No PM candidate for Third Front before LS polls: CPI. rediff.com, March 13, 2009, accessed May 16, 2015 .
  7. ↑ No consensus on Third Front's PM candidate. March 12, 2009, accessed May 16, 2015 .
  8. ↑ MC Rajan: PMK-boosted Jayalalithaa says there is no Third Front. indiatoday, March 29, 2009, accessed May 16, 2015 .