DMK, PMK join hands for TN Assembly polls

Chennai: Ending a month-long uncertainty, the DMK and PMK on Friday clinched an alliance for the coming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls under which the ruling party's junior partner has been allotted 31 Assembly seats.

The deal was finalized at a meeting between Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and PMK founder Dr S Ramadoss here on a day when the DMK first family-owned Kalaignar TV was raided by CBI over the 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Karunanidhi, announcing the accord at the end of the nearly 90 minute meeting with his former ally said the two parties had decided to fight the elections jointly.

A beaming Ramadoss said his party had been allotted 31 seats and also a Rajya Sabha seat.

He exuded confidence that the DMK-led alliance which also has Congress in it, would "sweep" the polls.

The poll-talks between the DMK and PMK had come to an abrupt end with Congress President Sonia Gandhi reportedly expressing her reservations over the presence of Ramdoss-led party in the alliance during her recent meeting with Karunanidhi in New Delhi.

As a damage control excercise, former Union Health Minister and Ramadoss' son, Dr R Anbumani, called on Gandhi at Delhi yesterday when she reportedly gave her nod for admitting PMK into the DMK-Congress combine.

The PMK, known for changing sides during every elections, had contested 31 seats in the 2006 Assembly polls in alliance with the DMK and won 18 of them.

The DMK snapped its ties with the PMK in 2008 after Ramadoss gave "zero marks" to DMK for governance. In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, PMK contested seven seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry from the AIADMK-led platform but drew a blank.

Besides, the two parties bitterly fought the Pennagaram by-polls last year in which the DMK won and PMK came second.

The party will be the third largest constituent in the DMK-Congress combine.

Meanwhile, the Congress is yet to officially inititiate poll talks with the DMK though it has repeatedly asserted that the alliance between the two parties is firm.

TNCC president K V Thangkabalu, after meeting Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, also in-charge of party's Tamil Nadu affairs, had announced that they would initiate talks by the week-end.