Kick starting efforts to formulate a policy for the third alternative, the Communist Party of India-Marxist on Sunday laid down three essential conditions that any prospective ally must meet.

Senior Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said the party has started discussions on the third alternative and any party that wants to be part of it must:

1. Uncompromisingly oppose communal forces.

2. Oppose the anti-people economic reforms, which are against the working people and which divide the country into shining India and suffering India.

3. Oppose all efforts to try to make India a subordinate ally to United States' imperialism.

"We supported the United Progressive Alliance in order to keep the communal forces away from State power. While that objective remains supreme, there is a large amount of discomfort about the present government's neo-liberal trajectory and also its efforts towards taking India into a strategic alliance with the United States.

"So, we are looking at a non-Congress, anti-Bharatiya Janata Party political alternative," Yechury said, as he laid down the conditions.

He added that the party is not looking at this third alternative as merely an electoral front, but as a long term ideological alternative.

Asked if this meant the party will maintain equidistance with Congress and BJP, Yechury said, "We are not for equidistance. For us, the communal forces are the major danger."

Regarding support for the Congress, he said, "During the last party Congress, which was held months after we extended support for the UPA government, we had sounded caution: While supporting the government based on the Common Minimum Programme, we will oppose any move of the government that is anti-people. That is what we have been doing till now."

He said the first to be approached for the formation of the third alternative will be the constituents of the stillborn United National Progressive Alliance, whose main constituents were the Samajwadi Party, the Telugu Desam Party and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

"We will also look at parties that have been part of either the UPA or the NDA, but who subscribe to the above stated views," he said.