Seat-sharing negotiations in Tamil Nadu ahead of the elections are finally over with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on Sunday allotting 25 Assembly seats and the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha constituency to the Congress.
DMK chief M K Stalin and Tamil Nadu Congress Committee chief K S Alagiri signed a formal pact at the DMK’s headquarters in Chennai. Despite their past association, the two parties had failed to reach an agreement for long.
Giving the Congress’s below-par performance in past elections, a section of the DMK, considered close to party chief M K Stalin, is said to have wanted to either keep the Congress out or give it a smaller share of seats. Sources said Congress president Sonia Gandhi spoke to Stalin on Saturday night, after which the deal was finally clinched.
In the 2016 Assembly polls, Congress only won eight seats of the 41 allotted to it. The DMK, on the other hand, won 89 of the 178 it contested.
While the Congress had initially sought 34 seats, the DMK was ready to offer only 18. Later, the Congress’s demand came down to 30, but the DMK initially stuck to its stand before agreeing to settle for 25 seats, along with the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat, where a by-poll was necessitated after sitting Congress MP H Vasanthakumar died of COVID-19 last year.
Surjitt Sahani
