For next month’s elections in Tamil Nadu, the DMK has allotted 25 seats to ally Congress. The Congress party has also been given the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat.
For next month’s elections in Tamil Nadu, the DMK has allotted 25 seats to ally Congress. The Congress party has also been given the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat that would go for bypolls following the death of Congress MP Vasanthakumar.
Dinesh Gundu Rao, the Congress leader in-charge of Tamil Nadu, told NDTV: “The DMK and the Congress have sealed seat-sharing deal. The Congress will contest in 25 assembly seats and the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat. Both cadre will now work together. We will win big.”
He said that the DMK will contest in 180 seats. He also informed that the MK Stalin-led party has also not given assurance on the Rajya Sabha seat.
After he visited DMK headquarters this morning to finalise the seat-sharing deal, Mr Rao said he was confident that the alliance will sweep the state polls.
“BJP by entering into an alliance with AIADMK, its intention is to finish off AIADMK. They want to kill all opposition parties and have ‘one party-one man rule’ in the country. Congress, DMK, Left, VCK will sweep these elections,” he was quoted as saying by news agency ANI while announcing the alliance.
Congress seat share in the alliance has come down significantly from the 41 seats it contested in the 2016 polls. It had won just eight then.
The Tamil Nadu Congress, as per sources, had asked for at least 30 seats while the DMK said it would only spare 24, leading to a deadlock. However, the deal was finalised after the Congress leadership in Delhi got in touch with the DMK’s top leadership in Chennai on Saturday evening, they said.
Tamil Nadu Congress chief KS Alagiri, with little bargaining power in the state, had said last week that the “ball is the DMK’s court” when it came to seat-sharing for the elections.
Hoping to return to power after being in opposition for 10 years, the DMK has allotted six seats to VCK, MDMK AND CPI, three seats to the Indian Union Muslim League and two to Manithaneya Makkal Katchi. It is also holding talks with the CPM.
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