DMK, Congress to hold seat-sharing talks on January 28

The Congress and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) will on Sunday kick off seat-sharing negotiations for the Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, even as the I.N.D.I.A. alliance appears to be in tatters at the national level.

The talks between DMK and Congress, likely to be represented by a high-powered team dispatched by the High Command along with leaders from the state unit, will also formally launch the election work of the Secular Progressive Alliance in Tamil Nadu.

Sources told DH that the Congress’ team will comprise of former Mukul Wasnik, Salman Khurshid and Ajoy Kumar besides Tamil Nadu Congress chief K S Alagiri, and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader K Selva Perunthagai.

The team will meet the seat-sharing panel constituted by the DMK last week, the sources said. “The meeting will set the tone for the negotiations, and I am sure there will be more such meetings before we agree on a number,” a senior TNCC leader told DH.

The Congress is expecting the DMK to stick to the 2019 seat-sharing formula under which the party got nine seats in Tamil Nadu along with the lone Lok Sabha seat in Puducherry, and will press for the same during the talks on Sunday.

“We settled for 25 seats in the assembly elections in 2021 because the DMK said they should be allowed to contest in a majority of seats in a state election. Since this is a national election, we just hope that the DMK allots 10 seats like in 2019. We hope they don’t bargain for more this time,” another Congress leader said.

The leader, however, said a change in constituencies was inevitable this time with the Congress also likely to ask for seats that it didn’t get in the 2019 elections. “Identification of seats comes much later. We have to agree on the number of seats and we hope to finish the process soon,” he added.

The DMK panel consists of Parliamentary Party leader T R Baalu, former Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy, who was disqualified as an MLA after he was convicted in a corruption case by the Madras High Court, ministers K N Nehru, I Periyasamy, and M R K Panneerselvam and MPs, A Raja, and Tiruchi Siva.

After the first round of talks with the Congress, the DMK will invite CPI(M), CPI, VCK, and MDMK for negotiations on seat-sharing as it hopes to complete the task and begin the campaign early. “We don’t have much time and that is why the committees were announced last week. The manifesto panel has already met once. We hope to finish the negotiations soon,” a DMK leader said.

Congress and DMK have had an alliance since 2004, except between March 2013 and February 2016, and have fought every election sans the 2014 Lok Sabha polls together. The alliance won in 2004, 2006, 2009, 2019, and 2021, while losing in the 2011 and 2016 assembly polls.