DMK strikes seat-sharing deal with Cong, allots 25 seats for Tamil Nadu polls

Chennai: After several rounds of formal and informal talks, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Congress on Saturday finalised the seat-sharing agreement for the April 6 assembly elections. As per the deal, Congress will be allotted 25 assembly seats and will get to contest by-polls to Kanyakumari Lok Sabha constituency.

The party is also understood to have sought a Rajya Sabha seat from DMK. It is believed that the DMK has agreed to the demand. The deal was finalised at a late night meeting between DMK chief M K Stalin and AICC in-charge for Tamil Nadu Dinesh Gundu Rao, TNCC chief K S Alagiri, and Congress Legislature Party leader K R Ramasamy.

“We have reached an agreement with the DMK. The agreement will be signed between the two parties at 10 am on Sunday,” Rao told reporters outside Stalin’s residence in upscale Cenotaph Road here.

As the talks were deadlocked with DMK and Congress sticking to their known stands, the AICC leadership is believed to have dealt the issue directly with the DMK and got the deal sealed. The DMK offered 18 seats in the first round of talks and increased it to 24 and finally agreed to allot 25 seats to Congress.

DH had on March 3 reported that the DMK had offered around 25 seats to the Congress. However, the Congress was upset with DMK’s offer and held consultations with its leaders on Thursday and Friday.

Though party functionaries were “upset” with the way they were being treated by the DMK, they felt the Congress was left with no option but to continue the alliance to defeat the AIADMK-BJP combine. As the talks with DMK made no progress, the Congress was forced to clarify its stand vis-a-vis its future plans – the party scotched speculation that it was mulling options like forming or joining a Third Front.

Congress and DMK have been in alliance since 2004 except for three years between 2013 and 2016.