Only a month ago, Surjeet debunked the idea of a third front in Tamil Nadu. Where is the third front? he asked. It has ceased to have relevance, he took pains to explain. The efforts of TMC president G K Moopanar to evolve a third front would only help the BJP and put down secular forces, he screamed.

Today, under the influence of the Poes Garden Amma, he sings a different tune. All of a sudden, after shutting the doors on a third front in the state, and contesting the elections in the company of the Congress, he meets Jayalalitha and the two agree that a third front Government is possible at the Centre.

Why this sudden shift from the CPM position of a few months ago that the Congress alone is capable of forming a non-BJP Government now? Political observers feel that the CPM is trying to engineer a position for itself at the Centre anddictate terms to the ``secular'' parties. That the CPM will revive its aborted attempt to have Jyoti Basu as prime minister with the backing of parties like the AIADMK, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh and may be the Congress too.

Witness the statements of Jayalalitha after the fall of the Vajpayee government. She said she would not mind the Congress forming an alternative government. However, if Basu headed the government, she would be `delighted'. In other words, a Congress-led government would be just tolerable but she preferred a CPM-led government.

Apparently, she has still not forgiven AICC president Sonia Gandhi for four reasons -- making Jayalalitha cool her heels in Delhi for three days before giving an appointment; Sonia's refusal to go in for a coalition government which would include the AIADMK; the delay in releasing the Congress list of candidates though she had set off on the campaign and Sonia's obstinate refusal to back a CPM-led government at the Centre and prevent snap elections.

Theurge of Surjeet to know-tow to Jayalalitha's plans is mysterious. After having brokered a Congress return to power a few months ago, his attempt to belittle the Congress and suddenly revive the prospects of a third front government is intriguing. There are some political observers who want to give Surjeet his due and say that the CPM leader's strategy revolves around preventing a BJP Government. There are others who believe that Surjeet is actually working for a CPM-led government. And that the RSP was used a few months ago to put the spokes in the wheel of the Congress to try and form a government.

The latest attempt to bring various parties like the AIADMK, CPI, SP and the RJD together is seen as a last-ditch move by Surjeet to have the CPM itself in the saddle.

But even the doublespeak master can have no explanation why he is now talking of a third front after weakening it or rejecting it in several states before the elections.

In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, the Left talks of a third front and theneed to fight both the TDP-BJP combine and the Congress. In Tamil Nadu, Surjeet goes out of his way to ridicule the concept of a third front.

In Bihar, Surjeet doesn't mind a front with the Congress but in Uttar Pradesh, another key-state, he would rather do business with Mulayam Singh, opposing both the Congress and the BJP.

The picture in the South is even more confusing. Alliance with the Congress in Tamil Nadu but oppose it in neighbouring Kerala, Andhra Pradesh.The Communists line couldn't be muddier. If the strategy was to have a confusing election scene, they couldn't have asked for a better script.