Staff Reporter

Kolkata: Dismissing any chance of a Third Front government coming up at the Centre after the elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, Lal Krishna Advani, on Friday said it was either the BJP or the Congress that would form the government.

Addressing an election rally in the Kolkata Uttar constituency, he said: “A single party [the Congress] had ruled the country for more than 45 years since Independence. It was the BJP which smashed the monopoly of the Congress… Only a government led by either of these two parties is possible at the Centre.”

On the “third and fourth fronts,” Mr. Advani said such entities did not exist. “I want to tell my Marxist friends that your existence in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura is enough,” he said in a lighter vein.

Admitting that “overconfidence” led to the BJP’s poor show in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections in spite of the “excellent track record of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government,” Mr. Advani said the party had since shed that image, and expressed the hope that it would fare well this time.

“The kind of support that I received on my campaign tours in Kerala and Tamil Nadu this time assured me that the BJP is no more a north Indian party, as said by some earlier. It is now a national party.”

Mr. Advani said the Congress and the Left Front had formed an “opportunist alliance” in 2004 and both sides would “face the consequence of playing such opportunistic politics.”

On the Ram temple issue, he said: “I want the Ram mandir to be built in Ayodhya… but our party supporters should understand the limitations in case we have to form a coalition government. I believe that at some point in future, both Hindus and Muslims will want to have the temple there.”

Mr. Advani criticised the United Progressive Alliance government’s role in handling the crisis situations in neighbouring Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The BJP leader emphasised the need for computer education for all students and promised to provide it if the party came to power.