Tamil Nadu Assembly elections: Congress mulls options as seat-sharing agreement with DMK hits a roadblock

Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) held hectic consultations with its leaders on Thursday to elicit their views on the hard stand taken by the senior ally in the state, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), in the allocation of seats for the April 6 assembly elections.

With the DMK sticking to its offer of less than 25 seats, a section within the Congress feels it would be better for the party to walk out of the alliance rather than “stomaching the insult.” Another section feels the party should meet the DMK “half-way” and agree for around 27 assembly seats going by the formula of 3 constituencies per Lok Sabha seat that alliance partners got in the DMK alliance in 2019.

AICC in-charge of Tamil Nadu, Dinesh Gundu Rao, held discussions with senior leaders of the party through the day on Thursday during which many are understood to have said that the Congress should accept the offer from DMK only if it is “respectable.”

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While Congress wants 35 seats, the DMK is not willing to go beyond 25. With both parties sticking to their known stands, the deadlock is yet to be broken. For the record, Rao told DH that Congress wants to continue the alliance with the DMK to defeat the AIADMK-BJP combine.

“We want the secular forces to be together and fight the elections. However, any alliance is based on mutual respect and that respect needs to be maintained,” Rao added.

A Congress MP told DH on condition of anonymity that the DMK was “adamant” on its stand. “They are not increasing the number of seats. Their offer remains the same. How can we just accept what they give? They should understand we have been with them for over a decade,” he said. However, the MP evaded a direct reply when asked whether walking out of the alliance was an option at this stage.

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DMK also maintained that the alliance was “strong” and the party does not want Congress to leave. “We do not want Congress to leave. But the Congress should understand that DMK is under compulsion to contest maximum seats. They (Congress) should not harp on the number of seats they get, but should think about winning 90 per cent of the seats that are offered,” the leader told DH.

Congress which contested 41 seats in 2016 won only in 8 and the DMK seems to be using this among many other developments like party MLAs joining BJP in Puducherry as the reason for offering less number of seats.