New Delhi, July 2: By packaging the nuclear divide in the country as one between the “Congress-led secular alliance” and the “BJP-led communal alliance”, the SP has managed to make the third alternative — the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) — largely irrelevant.

As the UNPA, consisting of the TDP, the INLD, the AGP, the Jharkhand Vikas Manch (JVM) and the National Conference (NC) apart from the SP, meets here on Thursday, there’s already a question mark over the alliance’s future.

“It all started with the PM’s dinner meeting for UPA allies recently. The SP attended the dinner, so obviously they wanted to be counted as a UPA ally,” NC president Omar Abdullah told The Indian Express. There would be no representation from NC for Thursday’s UNPA meeting.

The SP’s growing proximity to the Congress poses a direct problem to UNPA constituents like the TDP, INLD and AGP. The three regional parties have the Congress as their main adversary in their respective states. “Yes, this issue will have to be discussed and a future course of action decided,” said Ram Mohan Rao, trusted lieutenant of TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu.

AGP leader in the Lok Sabha Arun Kumar Sarma said: “The SP’s growing closeness to the Congress has obviously led to some problems for us. This needs to be debated in the meeting tomorrow.”

This doesn’t however mean that the UNPA will die a premature death in Thursday’s meeting. “SP may have local compulsions (to go ahead with the Congress in UP). But we’ll have to discuss larger issues,” says Rao.

Others have, however, already started scouting for allies. The AGP is already in touch with the BJP. “Yes, our delegation did meet BJP president Rajnath Singfh recently,” says Sarma. Both the BJP and Congress are said to be working on Babu Lal Marandi in Jharkhand. The INLD in Haryana, too, is looking at the BJP-led alliance as an option. While the TDP will consider the Left as an option in AP, there are indications that the party may switch camps after the Lok Sabha elections.

With the battlelines drawn, it is apparent that the coming elections will essentially be a fight between two competing national alliances, with the third front dream dying a premature death, putting the Left in a piquant situation.

While L K Advani’s recent speech in Kanpur set tongues wagging, party leaders clarified that he didn’t mean a tie-up with the BSP. However, in the fluid politics of UP, the two main parties — the BSP and SP — will not be seen together. With the SP firmly inching closer to the Congress, it’s anybody’s guess if the BSP will consider a post-poll tie up with the rival NDA alliance in the future. For the record, the BSP and BJP have firmly ruled out any possibility of an alliance.

In Tamil Nadu, all eyes are set on AIADMK’s J Jayalalithaa, an original constituent of the UNPA. With the BJP nursing great hopes from the AIADMK, Jaya has kept her options firmly open. The only certainty in the state is that the DMK and AIADMK will go with rival national alliances.

Other fence-sitters like Ram Vilas Paswan will like to wait and watch. “NDA is communal and Lalu has ditched us. Thus we will go it alone in the state,” he had said recently in Patna.

The UPA alliance and the NDA alliance thus will only be too happy with the UNPA dream withering away at the outset of the election season.

(with J P Yadav)