Cong Rakes Up Power Sharing In TN Again

Chennai: When it just looked that the power-sharing aspiration of the Congress in Tamil Nadu has been put to rest with the party reconciling to the idea of continuing in the DMK-led alliance and might probably only bargain for a few more seats, Congress whip in the Lok Sabha, Manickam Tagore, raked it up by stating that coalition politics was the reality by quoting the results of an IPDS (Indian Political Democratic Strategies) survey.

Apart from highlighting the possibility of the INDIA coalition winning the 2026 Assembly elections in the State, as the survey result pointed to, he, in a tweet, said that it was ‘time for share of power not only share of seats’ by reproducing a table from the survey that gave 3.10 percent of vote share to his party.

The Virudhunagar MP also said that no one can win an election without an alliance as every party had its own vote share, which was only a reiteration of the stand of Congress leaders for quite some time making subtle demands for share in power.

Though the AICC in charge of Tamil Nadu Girish Chodankar had started it all some time back by saying that the Congress had grown phenomenally in the State and hence would seek share in power, a view that had the support of a few other leaders also and seemingly pushed the fate of the alliance to the brink, Chodankar himself set it right saying that the alliance was on the right track on Saturday.

However, Tagore’s tweet might reopen the controversy that has the potential of even breaking alliance and also making the DMK cadre and workers, whose contribution was essential during the elections, disillusioned over the tie-up itself.

DMK organization secretary R S Bharati told the media at the party headquarters that when the alliance between the two parties, which has stood the test of time by winning several election in a row, was struck there was no talk of power sharing and if it had to be discussed now it could be done only at the level of DMK president M K Stalin and Congress top brass like Rahul Gandhi.

It is learnt that the DMK had told the Congress that there was no scope for power sharing in the State and that there could be negotiations on seat sharing alone. Also the party had expressed its inability to meet the demand expressed by some leaders on seat allocation since more parties like the DMDK and S Ramadoss faction of the PMK were likely to join the alliance and would have to be allotted constituencies.

While the idea of power sharing is not part of the State's political tradition, in which major parties never gave ministerial berths to minor allies, it was Vijay, who mooted the proposal at the launch of his political party, Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam.