Amidst calls by Trinamool Congress president and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for a ‘Federal Front’, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik appeared to be positively inclined towards the option.
Asked whether he would join the Federal Front, Patnaik said he would certainly look into the matter.
Talking to the media after returning from New Delhi on Thursday, he said that such a front was good for the country. “I think it will be a healthy thing for the country to have a Federal Front or a Third Front,” he said.
Patnaik, however, kept his cards close to chest on the matter by stating that it is still early days. “Let’s see how things will proceed,” he said.
The Odisha CM also said that nothing had been decided on the proposed front yet.
The BJD chief on Tuesday had indicated that he was open to joining a Third Front or a Federal Front of regional parties before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
However, he was non-committal on whether Left parties could be part of such a grouping. Patnaik led a delegation of BJD MPs and MLAs to the Rashtrapati Bhavan to submit a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee with one crore signatures demanding special category status to Odisha.
“The president said that he will go through the memorandum and submit it to the Centre,” he said.