Jayalalithaa & Vaiko seal seat-sharing deal in TN

CHENNAI: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the principal opposition party in Tamil Nadu, sealed its alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Thursday by finalising its seat-sharing arrangement with the firebrand Vaiko-led MDMK. With this, the opposition team in the state gets wrapped up with five parties supported by diverse ideologies and vote bases.

PMK, a party known to have always been on the side of the winning alliance, supported by the Vanniyars, an OBC community concentrated in the northeastern districts of TN, has ended up with seven seats, including one in Pondicherry. The Left parties���CPI and CPM���will contest from three constituencies each. Now, MDMK, a party founded on Tamil nationalism, has been given four constituencies of its choice���Erode, Virudhunagar, Thanjavur and Nilgiris.

Virudhunagar is Vaiko���s own bastion and Ganesh Murthy of MDMK is expected to hold fort at Erode. While Thanjavur is traditionally a DMK stronghold, Nilgiris, a reserved constituency now where DMK has fielded Union telecommunications and IT minister A Raja, remains a testing ground.

In the last LS polls in 2004, AIADMK went almost solo, BJP being its only alliance partner, by contesting in 33 out of the 39 constituencies in the state. Opposition DMK allied with five other regional parties and Congress to form the Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) to win all 40 seats in TN and Pondicherry.

This time, the tables are turned. What is left of DPA is only the alliance among Congress, DMK and VCK, a Dalit welfare party with considerable clout across all regions in the state, 20% of whose population comprises Dalits. DMK will contest from 21 seats, five more than the 16 it contested in 2004 whereas AIADMK will contest from 23 seats, 10 less than the 2004 polls.