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Seat sharing talks between Congress, DMK commence
Secret parleys between the DMK and Congress have begun even before the seat sharing committees of two parties have met. Sources in both the parties have confirmed that back-room negotiations have started. The Congress is said to have suggested its desire to contest in around 12 seats to the Dravidian party.
By
migrator
migrator
Chennai
However, the DMK, which has been generous in sharing seats with the Congress in the last few elections (except the 2014 Lok Sabha election) has chosen to be more guarded this time around.
The DMK seems to be reluctant to part with more than seven seats, including the Congress-ruled Puducherry.
An influential member of the DMK first family, during a recent visit to New Delhi, had communicated his unwillingness to allot beyond seven seats to the national party.
Surprisingly, that offer has not been immediately opposed, even by senior Congress leader P Chidambaram. The former union minister was learnt to have suggested to his party leadership that they should settle for whatever the DMK offered.
“The idea is to prevent the BJP-led alliance from getting any seats in the State. The AICC has entrusted the task of winning the maximum number of seats in TN to the DMK. Our party high command will not play hard ball this time,” a Congress senior privy to the talks told DT Next.
“The numbers have already been decided. If Rahul Gandhi interferes, the DMK might increase the offer by one seat. The state Congress unit would only be left with the task of finalising the constituencies.,” the Congress leader added.
Confirming the negotiations, a DMK insider with knowledge of the talks said they have planned to allot two seats each to Vaiko’s MDMK and the CPM and one each to CPI, VCK and IUML.
“After accommodating the smaller parties, we will have only seven seats to offer to the Congress. Our leadership is firm that we should contest in not less than 25 seats,” he said.
Under such a situation, Stalin might be forced to deny ticket to M H Jawahirullah’s Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK), which fears that it would only be pressurised to contest under the DMK’s ‘Rising Sun’ symbol.
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