Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav hosted leaders of several opposition parties at a lunch meeting
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav today hosted leaders of several opposition parties at a lunch meeting at his Delhi home, among them Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar from Bihar.
What makes today's meeting different from several other attempts that Mr Yadav has made to stitch together a Third Front of non-Congress and non-BJP parties, is the absence of the Left.
Sources said today's lunch is an effort to create a "pressure or influence group of like-minded parties" ahead of the winter session of Parliament.
It is being seen as an attempt by smaller parties to remain politically relevant after the national elections, which saw most of them fare poorly as the BJP and its partners seized a sizeable majority in the Lok Sabha.
Many of these parties had played important roles in propping up minority governments led by the BJP and the Congress for a number of years. But this year, even Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose party rules the crucial Uttar Pradesh, has won just five seats in the Lok Sabha.
Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), the ruling party in Bihar, has only two.
These regional players are also being threatened in their areas of influence with the Narendra Modi-led BJP determined to bag as many states as it can in an effort to increase its numbers in the Rajya Sabha.
In state elections in Maharashtra and Haryana last month, the BJP won big; in Haryana that was at the cost of not only the Congress, but also the OP Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal, whose Ajay Chautala also attended today's lunch meeting in Delhi.
Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal (United) is said to have been instrumental in bringing together these parties for this first meeting. In by-elections held in Bihar recently, his party managed to keep an aggressive BJP in check by pooling resources with Lalu Prasad Yadav, a rival for decades, and the Congress.
Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda of the Janata Dal Secular also attended today's meeting.