Congress, DMK seat-sharing deadlock ends

The DMK today blinked in the battle of attrition and conceded 63 seats for Congress under a seat-sharing deal between the two parties for the coming Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, ending three days of political drama.

The leadership of DMK and Congress have finally decided on the number of seats and Congress will contest 63 seats, announced Ghulam Nabi Azad to reporters outside the residence of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

The demand of 63 seats by Congress marks an increase of 15 seats over the number it got in the 2006 assembly elections and a number that was frowned upon by DMK M Karunanidhi when he announced pull out of the party from the UPA government on Saturday.

The DMK will contest 121 seats and Congress 63 under the seat sharing deal for the April 13 assembly polls, party chief M Karunanidhi announced today.

Making a simultaneous announcement of the deal here, the Tamil Nadu chief minister said he had taken away one seat each from his party, PMK and IUML to concede to Congress' demand for 63 seats.

"I am happy that the deal has been struck between DMK and Congress. Like 63 nayanmars (Tamil saivities), you have been given the 63 seats. You should accept it with the same amount of bhakti like nayanmars," he told Congress at a meeting where volunteers from other parties joined DMK.

Under the seat sharing formula, DMK will contest 121 seats, Congress 63, PMK 30, VCK 10, KMK 7, IUML two and MMK one for the 234-member assembly.

After hard bargaining, Congress managed to extract 63 seats from its alliance partner, which had refused to budge and threatened to pull out its ministers from the UPA cabinet.

The DMK was initially willing to part with only 55 seats, and later increased it to 56, but it was not acceptable to the Congress, which stuck to its demand.

The DMK chief had on Friday described the Congress stand as unjustified. His threat of pulling out the ministers did not work this time and a resolute Congress got 15 more seats than it was alloted in the 2006 assembly polls.

This is the second highest number of seats Congress will be contesting in alliance with DMK after 1980, when both parties shared 112 seats each under an electoral pact then.

Charging a section of the media with carrying reports to ensure the alliance did not materialise, Karunanidhi said, "today is a fitting reply to them," as they tried to divert the DMK workers.