DMK renews offer to Congress as PMK may go with ruling party

Even highly placed DMK sources accepted that the PMK has gone with the AIADMK despite them offering six plus one. It was corroborated by DMK Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi cancelling her scheduled trip back to the city on Monday evening for a fresh round of negotiations with Congress leader Ahmed Patel in the national capital on Tuesday.

While former union minister TR Baalu, who was also a part of the seat sharing negotiation with the Congress had returned to the city late on Monday, Kanimozhi stayed put there to hold talks with ally Congress, a DMK source requesting anonymity said.

Adding that the allotment for the Congress, which had settled for eight seats (including one in Puducherry) during Sunday’s talks, would go up by one or two seats once the deal between the PMK and the AIADMK gets formalised.

In fact, the DMK and the Congress had delayed the formal announcement of their seat sharing deal vainly hoping to get the PMK on board.

The DMK sources privy to the negotiations revealed that Stalin had compromised his stand and offered six plus one Rajya Sabha berth to the PMK, which is expected to host leaders of the AIADMK who would engage a top-level BJP delegation in the city on Tuesday.

Even the DMK sources with knowledge of negotiations conceded late on Monday that the PMK had gravitated towards the AIADMK which made an offer too difficult to refuse. The DMK would also face pressure from the Left parties and the MDMK who have been struggling to convince the DMK to get two seats till Sunday. 

The DMK had planned to scale down the allocation to even CPM to one seat in the event of the PMK joining them and that too when the CPI insisted that it would not agree to anything less than what was allocated for Marxists and they would not compromise on self-respect while holding seat sharing negotiations.

However, the AIADMK-PMK deal could be a blessing in disguise for Thol Thirumavalavan’s VCK which was not sure of remaining in the secular front led by the DMK owing to the likely entry of the PMK. 

A belligerent DMK, which planned to ditch the VCK to accommodate the PMK, would now have to be pally with same Dalit party to ensure that it does not lose another ally to rival TTV Dhinakaran with whom Thirumavalavan was understood to have opened talks in the last few days.