In an indication of thawing relationship, the DMK did not press the threat of withdrawing its six ministers from the Union ministry on Monday which it had earlier announced to do after withdrawing support to the UPA government following a bitter fall-out over seat-sharing with the Congress.
The two parties held intense deliberations in Delhi which continued throughout the day and well into the night. In Chennai, Deputy Chief Minister Stalin told reporters: “Pranab Mukherjee (Finance Minister) spoke twice to ‘Kalaignar’ (Karunanidhi) over the phone from Delhi. He has sought a day’s time. Hence the issue of submission of resignation letters (by the DMK Ministers) would become clear on Tuesday.”
The DMK ministers were scheduled to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at 11 am on Monday to hand over their quit letters but postponed it to 7 pm and finally deferred it indefinitely. This happened as the UPA trouble-shooter and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee held talks with DMK leader and Textiles Minister Dayanidhi Maran, AICC Tamil Nadu in-charge Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ahmed Patel, political secretary to party president Sonia Gandhi.
Following this, Mukherjee informed the progress of the deliberations to Gandhi. During the day, Mukherjee held two rounds of telephonic talks with DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi after he spoke on Monday night with T R Baalu.
Mukherjee urged the Tamil Nadu chief minister not to insist on resignations of the ministers and said a solution to the crisis would be found in a day. There was also a meeting between Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram, who was the chief negotiator from the Congress side on seat-sharing.
The relations between the two parties reached a crisis-point as Karunanidhi announced on Saturday his decision to withdraw his ministers from the Centre and end the seat-sharing talks accusing Congress of increasing its demand from the mutually agreed 60 Assembly seats to 63.