Chennai: DMK leader and Lok Sabha MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi met former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee at her Kalighat residence in Kolkata Thursday, adding fresh momentum to speculation about a possible regional political formation outside the Congress-led INDIA bloc ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.
The meeting follows Kanimozhi’s recent meetings with other regional leaders including Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray at his Matoshree residence in Mumbai last week, where talks reportedly covered the defeated delimitation Bill, the future of the INDIA bloc, and the role of regional parties. She then held separate discussions in Delhi with NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar and his daughter, Lok Sabha MP Supriya Sule.
While the DMK has called the meetings a means to just strengthen the role of regional parties and to discuss their stance on national issues, the possibility of a third front after Congress left the Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) is being discussed.
Kanimozhi’s meeting with Mamata was a closed-door meeting lasting over an hour with sources stating that her interaction was only a courtesy call. However, the sequence of meetings has revived discussion of a Congress-less opposition arrangement.
With DMK-Congress relations becoming further strained following this year’s Tamil Nadu assembly elections, the Dravidian party had also skipped the INDIA bloc meeting, adding to questions about its future.
While there were similar differences between the TMC and Congress in West Bengal as well—where they had decided to contest the 6 October bypolls to Nandigram and Rejinagar seats separately—Mamata Friday lent her support to the Congress nominee for Nandigram, adding that Rahul Gandhi called her and they were together in their fight against the BJP.
DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai told ThePrint that the Kanimozhi-Mamata meeting was to ensure that regional parties were on the same page on national issues faced in Tamil Nadu. DMK sources said regional leaders have been focusing on greater coordination among state-based regional parties, especially on issues like delimitation that affect southern states, and the space for regional forces in national politics.
Political observers see Kanimozhi’s back-to-back meetings as an early attempt by the DMK, under chief and former CM M.K. Stalin, to test the waters for a third front and a broader platform of regional parties that could take on the BJP-led NDA while keeping Congress outside the equation.
Political analyst and academic Ramu Manivannan said the third front is one of the prospects that has emerged with the lack of trust between Congress and other regional parties.
“Even in Congress ruled states, the differences have emerged and if seat sharing talks do not go well in UP, Akhilesh Yadav can extend support and even AAP in Delhi might join the third front. It is a better prospect for them all to be able to position themselves nationally. For DMK, Congress walking away from the SPA and then not attending the INDIA alliance meeting itself paved the way for establishing a third front. They might not want to be too late in discussing this,” he told ThePrint.
The idea of a non-Congress, non-BJP “third front” is not new. It has been floated before as well, leading analysts to see the possibility of a third front as a fruitful prospect for all regional parties.
Political commentator Sri Kumar Kannan said that in some way or the other, Congress and the third front parties are making some moves and counter moves against each other.
“While Congress wants to position the next elections as BJP vs Congress, their attitude with regional parties has not strengthened their lies. The third front would be set up by bringing together minority parties because they do play a major role in state politics. The regional parties want to revive their power nationally and come united together. They want to break the bipolar system of politics of BJP and Congress at the centre,” he told ThePrint.
NCP(SP) sources described the meetings as preliminary, with the party remaining non-committal. No formal announcement of a new front has been made, and both the DMK and TMC have avoided characterising the Kolkata meeting as political alliance-building. For now, the developments remain at the level of speculation, though they underscore growing uncertainty over the cohesion of the INDIA bloc three years before the next general elections.
(Edited by Archishman Ganguly)
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