DMK-Cong deal awaits Azad’s touch

Chennai

DMK is firm to seal the deal with upto 40 seats to Congress. A highly placed DMK source told DTNext that party treasurer M K Stalin was confident of clinching the deal at 36 seats.

Incidentally, DMK president M Karunanidhi held an urgent meeting with party treasurer M K Stalin, Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi and MLA E V Velu at his residence on the issue. The meeting happened amid rumours that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had called Karunanidhi over phone and convinced him to part with 40 seats. It led some party men to believe that Azad might air-dash to the city and formalise the electoral pact on Saturday itself.

However, it was proved otherwise state Congress president EVKS Elangovan cancelled a scheduled meeting of party advocates wing at Sathyamurthy Bhavan on Saturday morning and left to his native Erode.

From Coimbatore, he said the seat sharing talks would fructify in a day or two, vindicating the belief of DMK leaders that union finance minister P Chidambaram was the reason for the impasse. “Chidambaram had even advised a few members of the Congress seat sharing committee to deliberately push for DMK seats when they visit Anna Arivalayam to discuss constituency identification,” said a DMK senior requesting anonymity.

“It is not that they are against the DMK or want this alliance to fall apart, they are exploiting the situation to mount maximum pressure on Elangovan,” the leader reasoned, gladly admitting that Elangovan has been going the extra mile to formalise the alliance at the earliest.