Chennai: The DMK and the Congress in Tamil Nadu have sealed a seat-sharing agreement for the Lok Sabha elections, a day after the AIADMK and the BJP finalised their alliance and decided on the division of seats.
DMK president MK Stalin said the Congress will contest from nine seats in Tamil Nadu and one seat from Puducherry. According to sources, the Congress had been bargaining for 16 seats from the state, which sends 39 lawmakers to the Lok Sabha. Puducherry has just the one seat.
Stalin, while addressing a press meet, said the DMK has not finalised its seat share, and would decide on it after talking with other potential alliance partners in the state.
The DMK is also in talks with the CPI and CPI(M), Vaiko’s MDMK, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK- a Dalit party) and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) to include them in the alliance. The DMK is hoping to contest on at least 25 seats in the state.
Both DMK and the Congress failed to win any Lok Sabha seat in Tamil Nadu in the 2014 general elections, but are hopeful of a change in fortunes.
Congress general secretary KC Venugopal, who was a part of the negotiation team, said the alliance is positive about a “very good result".
“We are looking at full number of seats from Tamil Nadu. We are going to have a very strong result in Tamil Nadu," he said.
He said the Congress will finalise in the next few days the nine seats it will fight from in Tamil Nadu. “Rahul Gandhi has given us clear instructions. We had informal talks with the DMK," he added.
The two alliance partners seemed to have been spurred into action by the BJP and AIADMK taking a lead in forming their tie-up. The two had announced their alliance on Tuesday and had also managed to bring the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK).
The BJP will be the junior-most member of the three in the alliance and would contest on five seats. The PMK would get to fight from seven Lok Sabha seats. It is not yet clear how many seats AIADMK will keep for itself as it is still in talks with a few other parties.
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