DMK to fight on 180 seats, deal inked

After weeks of dilly-dallying, the DMK allocated 25 seats to the Indian National Congress on Sunday for the upcoming election to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly. The DMK will contest on 180 seats in the House of 234.

The deal was signed by DMK chief MK Stalin and president of Tamil Nadu Congress Committee KS Alagiri in the presence of All India Congress Committee leader Dinesh Gundu Rao.

“The DMK and the Congress have sealed the seat-sharing deal. The Congress will contest on 25 Assembly seats and the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat. Both cadre will now work together. We will win big,” Rao said.

The gloom on the face of Alagiri and Rao during the photo session made it clear that the Congress had to eat humble pie in the negotiations with the DMK. The Congress had asked for at least 40 seats, a seat lesser than what it was allocated by the DMK for the 2016 Assembly election.

But the party that ruled singlehandedly till 1967 and had contributed all-time greats like K Kamaraj, N Sathyamoorthi, C Rajagopalachari, R Venkitaraman and C Subramanian to the nation was at the mercy of the DMK leaders who cited the low striking rate of the Congress as the reason for the reduction in the number of seats.

The only consolation for the Congress is that it has been allocated the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat where a bypoll is being held on April 6.

The bypoll will elect a successor to H Vasanth Kumar, the sitting Congress MP who succumbed to Covid-19. It is expected that the Congress may field one of the sons of late Vasanth Kumar as a candidate for the seat, a sure seat for the Congress.

The deal between the DMK and the Congress was struck amidst reports about the possibility of Congress casting its lots with the Makkal Neethi Meyyam led by actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan.

“We have reached an agreement with the DMK with an intention to leave no room for the BJP to win. We are in this alliance not for the Government, but to keep our ideology alive,” Gundu Rao told reporters when asked about the reduction in the number of seats allocated for his party. Rao and Alagiri directed their ire at the BJP, terming it as a big disease than coronavirus that has struck the country.

The DMK-led alliance is featuring the MDMK led by Vaiko for the first time in an Assembly election. The MDMK was formed in 1984 after Vaiko was expelled from the DMK for posing a challenge to MK Stalin’s rise in the party.

The VCK’s presence in the DMK-led front is being seen as an inauspicious development. The front featuring the VCK had lost all the Assembly elections in the past.

With the signing of the seat allocation agreement with the Congress, the DMK is ready to take the field to fight the 2021 Tamil Nadu battle. Other parties like the Vaiko-led MDMK and Thirumavalavan-led VCK have been allocated six seats each. The DMK would field its candidates in 180 constituencies.

Now that the AIADMK and the DMK has completed the seat allocation talks, Tamil Nadu electorate is ready for the month-long campaign exercise.