There is no such thing like a “Third Front” or a non-BJP, non-Congress front available to the voters of India in a Lok Sabha election. In fact, there never has been.

It’s cooking again, the recipe for a non-Congress, non-BJP Third Front. On 5 February, eleven regional parties decided to coordinate their efforts on the floor of Parliament. Then, on 10 February, leaders of five of those parties, JD(U) Chief Nitish Kumar, CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat, CPI’s AB Bardhan and Forward Bloc’s Debabrata Biswas met for breakfast at the Delhi home of former ‘Third Front’ Prime Minister and JD(S) leader HD Deve Gowda. They promise something more concrete to the nation after the final session of the 15th Lok Sabha ends on 21 February.

Whatever that is will be a false promise. There is no such thing like a “Third Front” or a non-BJP, non-Congress front available to the voters of India in a Lok Sabha election. In fact, there never has been. There is a difference between a government led by a Prime Minister who is not from the Congress or BJP and a government which has nothing to do with the Congress or BJP. India has experimented with the former but never with the latter.

In 1977, when Morarji Desai became the first “Third Front”, non-Congress (and indeed non-Jan Sangh) Prime Minister of India, he did so in alliance with the Jan Sangh (BJP’s precursor). LK Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee were important members of the Cabinet. In 1979, when he was felled and replaced by Charan Singh, another Third Fronter, it was done with the support of the Congress.

Then in 1989, when VP Singh became Prime Minister of another Third Front (it was called the National Front), he was supported by not just the Left (the usual suspect in a Third Front) but by the BJP as well. His government fell after 11 months in office when the BJP withdrew support. The Third Front experiment continued, with Chandrashekhar replacing VP Singh and the Congress replacing the BJP as the outside supporter. Needless to say it did not last.

It didn’t take long for a Third Front to reemerge. In 1996, what was left of VP Singh’s Janata Dal hoisted Karnatala Chief Minister HD Deve Gowda into the Prime Minister’s chair but the government an on the life support of 146 Congress MPs. When then Congress President Sitaram Kesri tired of Gowda he replaced him with IK Gujral only to abandon him in 10 months’ time. It isn’t surprising that voters have opted out of giving a Third Front another opportunity to rule, not least because it has always been a front run at the mercy of either the Congress or BJP, far from its rallying cry of being equidistant from both ‘national’ parties. In reality, it has always been a second front, formed opportunistically to either stop the Congress or to prevent the BJP from forming a central government.

In 2014, Messers Nitish, Karat and Co has no realistic chance of laying claim to form a government in Delhi without the backing of Congress or BJP. As long as the Left is an integral part of the Front, it is only reasonable to assume that the motley group will expect to be propped up by the ‘secular’ Congress. After all, the Left backed the Congress in 2004. But voters have wisened up to this. If they want a Congress government they will elect one; why bother with a weak government that is effectively run by the Congress from behind?

That is why the Third Front is a non-starter. There is no realistic chance of these eleven new found friends getting anywhere more than 100 Lok Sabha seats put together. They may cobble together another 50 or 60 but no more. After all, Mamata cannot be on the same side as the Left, Lalu can’t be on the same side as Nitish and Mayawati cannot be on the same side as Lalu.

The Third Front, like its constituents, is a reality only in the states where it is possible to form stable and lasting governments without the need for support either from Congress or BJP. There is a reason why the Congress and BJP alone are labelled ‘national’ parties. They have always been the powers that sat on the throne or ruled from behind. There is no Third Front except the one that periodically cooks in the imagination of a few over-ambitious politicians.