Congress Leader Coming to Finalise Seat Sharing

 Chennai: AICC general secretary K C Venugopal is expected to come to Chennai on February 2 to finalise the seat sharing arrangement with the DMK that continued to defy a resolution despite repeated meetings between top leaders with both the partners digging in their heels – the DMK refusing to agree for more than 27 seats and the Congress demanding at least 30 seats and share in power.

While Congress Lok Sabha whip and Virudhunagar MP, Manickam Tagore, continued to meet media persons and repeat his stand on seat sharing, including the allocation of Madurai North constituency that is now held by the DMK to the Congress, DMK deputy general secretary and MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi claimed that the talks were continuing.

TNCC president K Selvaperunthagai, too, said that there was no threat of the alliance and the talks would continue in the next two days but Tagore continued with his aggressive stand and said that he would be ruthless in dealing with those who speak about the Congress in an undignified manner.

Now that it has come to light that the BJP would be allotted 31 seats by the AIADMK, the Congress is likely to up the ante and demand more seats. But the DMK had already made it clear that it would not be able to allocate more than seats, besides a Rajya Sabha nomination and the Chief Minister post in the Union Territory of Puducherry.

One of the demands, it was learnt, that Kanimozhi placed before the top Congress leaders including Malikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi was not to assign Girish Chodonkar, AICC in-charge for Tamil Nadu, for the negotiations on seat sharing. That Venugopal is now coming for the talks could be perhaps because of that.

So, DMK sources feel that all the drama put out by the Congress MPs and other national leaders were only to drive a hard bargain for more seats and share in power. Once they realized that it was not going to happen, they might come around and dilute their demands and might not take a decision on going to the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) of Vijay for an alliance.

However, some leaders in the Congress like Praveen Chakravarty had favoured an alliance with the TVK and many Congress leaders had put out messages when Vijay’s latest film ‘Jana Nayagan’ got into trouble with the censors. But now the Congress is keeping quiet though the censors have not certified the film, produced at a projected cost of Rs 300 crore.