DMK gives in, hands 60 seats to Congress

CHENNAI: The DMK reached a seat-sharing accord with Congress on Thursday conceding it 60 seats after daylong hectic talks. The seat sharing that clearly showed 2G scam-hit DMK’s diminished bargaining power would be formalised on Friday after which constituencies and candidates would be identified.

Sources said the breakthrough was achieved after senior DMK leader M K Stalin persuaded his father DMK supremo M K Karunanidhi to agree to give 60 seats instead of allowing talks to drag and further lower the morale of party cadres. That would leave DMK to contest 122 seats in the House of 234. The remaining seats are being contested by smaller allies like PMK and VCK.

In 2006, DMK contested 132 seats and won 96 while Congress bagged 34 of the 48 it contested.
The alliance was in danger of coming unstuck with talks on Wednesday crashing over seat sharing and signals emanating from the ruling party circles on Thursday that they may not be averse to going ahead with various regional parties to contest the coming assembly elections without the Congress.

Earlier in the day, the Congress also seemed to harden its stance with Sonia Gandhi’s special emissary Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad flying off to New Delhi skipping a second round of negotiations with Karunanidhi after talks on Wednesday night remained inconclusive. This could well have been posturing by alliance partners to wait and watch as to who would blink.

Budget session likely to end on March 25

With the election fever in five states catching up, the ongoing budget session of Parliament is likely to end abruptly on March 25 to enable the MPs to hit the campaign trail well in advance.