People's Front meet tomorrow

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 20. The Peoples' Front leaders who are assembling here ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament will hold a meeting on Sunday to take stock the current political situation in the country and review its progress in Uttar Pradesh.

With the Front convenor and Samajwadi Party president, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, spearheading the campaign in Uttar Pradesh, the Front plans to make the Assembly polls a testing ground for the combination.

The Front has begun its campaign with public rallies at Banda, Bareilly and Jhansi which have been attended by leaders from the CPI, the CPI-(M), the Samajwadi Party among others.

The meeting on Sunday would be chaired by the Front president, Mr. Jyoti Basu, who is scheduled to be in the capital for the CPI-(M) politburo meeting starting tomorrow.

Apart from the preparations for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the meeting would discuss the Agra summit, and issues that could be raised in the monsoon session beginning on July 23.

The CPI-(M) politburo member, Mr. Sitaram Yechury, told The Hindu that the meeting could also draw up the future course of the Front's meetings in Uttar Pradesh.

The Front, which has four Left parties - the CPI, the CPI-(M), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Forward Bloc - the Samajwadi Party and the Janata Dal (Secular) as its constituents, is yet to expand the combination which aims to build a third alternative to both the Congress and the BJP.

Interestingly, while the Front leaders had initially maintained that the Rashtriya Janata Dal was a part of the combination, the party president, Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav, refused to keep distance from the Congress a demand made subsequently by the Samajwadi Party.

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