A third front, excluding the Congress, to fight the RSS-BJP almost came into being on Monday, much like a political fairy tale creatively woven with imagination.

The fictional political plot was hawked with such force that even the real characters involved got rattled, destabilising the objective of a dialogue between like-minded individuals.

Yashwant Sinha, the architect of Tuesday’s meeting which is being projected as NCP veteran Sharad Pawar’s initiative, told The Telegraph: “This is not a meeting to form any third front or exclude the Congress. I cannot help if the media creates a false impression.”

What accorded credibility to the impression that a third front of 12-13 parties was being unveiled is the venue of the meeting: Pawar’s residence.

It was reported throughout the day that Pawar had invited leaders of non-Congress and non-BJP parties to float a separate front that will ultimately confront Narendra Modi’s dominance. Election strategist Prashant Kishor was portrayed as the mastermind of this grand idea.

Kishor, however, has nothing to do with this event and his meeting with Pawar on Monday was unrelated, sources said.

Although the venue is Pawar’s New Delhi residence, he is neither the host nor a part of the group holding the meeting. His party colleague Majid Menon, who is a member of the platform Rashtra Manch formed by like-minded individuals, fixed the venue as Pawar showed interest in meeting the leaders.

This was enough for speculation to begin on an alleged Pawar conspiracy against the Congress. Kishor’s meeting with Pawar was interpreted as Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee’s blessings to the group.

Initially, Trinamul’s Dinesh Trivedi was a member of this group but he has not been invited. Manish Tewari of the Congress too was a member but will not attend Tuesday’s meeting after the propaganda about its anti-Congress agenda. Another invitee, Kapil Sibal, has also declined to attend.

The first invitation for this meeting was sent by Ghansyam Tewari, a spokesperson of the Samajwadi Party and a member of the Manch. As nobody responded favourably, Menon started talking to individual leaders and requesting them to attend “to discuss the current political scenario”.

No senior leader — Mamata, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, M.K. Stalin, Uddhav Thackeray, Sitaram Yechury, D. Raja — will be present.

The meeting might have attracted greater participation but for the propaganda on television. One senior Opposition leader, who initially consented to attend and later pulled out, told this newspaper: “Any inclusive politics should not begin with exclusion. What is this anti-Congress agenda? Is this how you plan to fight the RSS-BJP? We may be concerned about what the Congress is doing but the solution is not to jettison the main Opposition party.”

Sinha said: “Rashtra Manch, formed three years ago, used to meet once in a while but couldn’t meet for the last 16 months due to Covid. We just thought we should meet now. The venue, decided by Majid Menon, incidentally happens to be Pawar’s residence. There is no agenda against the Congress. We are obviously against the policies of the

Modi government. Any like-minded party can send their representatives for discussion. What shape this discussion will take in the future is not known. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Those likely to attend the meeting are retired judge A.P. Singh, poet Javed Akhtar, lawyer K.T.S. Tulsi, former JDU leader Pawan Verma, journalists Karan Thapar, Ashutosh and Pritish Nandi and former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Qureshi, among others.