Rahul’s Visit on March 5 Puts Congress Leaders on Their Toes

Chennai: Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s expected visit to Chennai on March 5 to launch the party’s campaign for the Assembly elections has put the party leaders in the State on their toes as they had to finalise the alliance with the DMK, which has been hanging fire after some leaders made demands for share in power and more seats to contest.

Since Rahul Gandhi’s visit would quickly follow that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the State on March 1, the pressure is on the Congress leaders to make it a successful event by showing a good turnout. Since the party’s tie-up has not been renewed with the Secular Progressive Alliance, bringing in crowds for the meeting could be a task if the DMK decided to ignore it.

Though both the DMK and also the Congress have been maintaining that the alliance was intact and the dispute was only over the number of seats and the question that has be answered is if it would be a coalition government, in the event of the parties not arriving at an agreement before March 5, it could lead to the snapping of the ties.

So with none of its traditional allies on their side, the Congress might find it difficult to organize a public meeting to match the grandiosity of a Prime Ministerial event that too after the NDA had roped in several small political parties into its collective, apart from the big AIADMK.

DMK, too, would like to reshape the coalition led by it in the State, and hence would finalise seat sharing with the allies who have agreed to be on board by distributing the seats now earmarked for the Congress.

Before the Congress leaders, including AICC in charge of Tamil Nadu Girish Chodankar, left Chennai after waiting for some time to seal the deal with the DMK, they had stuck to their old stand on power sharing. Chodankar had also told a newspaper that they wanted power sharing and more seats, demands that are now anathema to the DMK.

Perhaps Congress has other alternatives, like hooking up with the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK), which is an avenue that some top leaders might be pursuing. At the grassroots level, the Congress workers in Tamil Nadu are only looking forward to the renewal of the old coalition, which could have serious ramifications like a split in the State Congress, development that the party honchos might not be able to handle in their mad scramble to make Rahul Gandhi’s visit a successful one.