Congress Weighs Options as DMK Plays Hardball on Seats

TNCC president K Selvaperunthagai rushed to New Delhi to take part in the meeting that the party high convened on an emergency basis after pressure mounted on the party to take a decision on continuing the decade long tie up with the DMK or snapping it and aligning with the nascent Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) of actor Vijay.

While details of the other participants from Tamil Nadu are not clear, Delhi-based leaders like Congress general secretary K C Venugopal and AICC in charge of Tamil Nadu Girish Chodankar are expected to attend it as an urgent need has been felt to break the impasse caused by the DMK by postponing the appointment of a committee to discuss and finalise the seat sharing arrangement.

Chodankar, who was camping in Chennai for a few days to hold discussions with the DMK's committee, had to leave without meeting anyone when the differences between the two parties escalated with the DMK organizing a meeting of its allies in Puducherry without inviting the Congress, whose leader in the Lok Sabha Manickam Tagore raised an issue over DMK’s locus standi in seeking leadership of the alliance.

Tagore said in a social media message that the DMK had only 8 percent vote share against the 26 percent of the Congress in the Union Territory. That observation gains significance in the backdrop of the DMK, during the earlier talks on seat-sharing, agreeing to accede the Chief Minister post to the Congress in Puducherry but not willing to give more seats in Tamil Nadu.

But by convening the meeting with a view to making its member S Jagadrakshan the chief minister of Puducherry, DMK sent across the message that the old agreements on seat sharing might no longer hold good. More than anything is the DMK’s disinterestedness in holding talks with the Congress now after the party reportedly refused to climb down from its demand for 35 seats.

Congress MP, Karti Chidambaran, blamed the DMK for the delay in the seat sharing negotiations and said that the chances of Vijay’s cinema popularity converting into votes was remote, in an X message on Saturday, indicating his preference to go with the DMK.

However several Congress leaders have been favouring an alliance with TVK, which would possibly not only give a share in power, if the coalition wins, but also allocate more seats, giving an opportunity for more Congress leaders to contest the elections.

It was in the backdrop of an uncertainty over the continuation of the alliance with the State leaders of the Congress divided on the issue, the meeting was convened in Chennai to elicit the views of the State leaders. Earlier, a meeting was held in January after the rift between the two parties took a nasty turn with leaders indulging in an acrimonious exchange.

Even now, the high command had initially called for a meeting of State leaders up to the level of district secretaries on February 10 in New Delhi to elicit their views. But ahead of that, the top honchos decided to meet and deliberate on it.