Tarique Anwar, BeyondHeadlines
New Delhi: With a new hope to reach any agreement on the ongoing rift between Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) and Congress party on seat sharing for Tamil Nadu assembly election, both the parties have today reopened the negotiation process.
This development came after Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke to DMK chief and Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi today for half an hour and finannly, both sides decided to resume talks.
The finance minister rang DMK leader TR Balu’s cell phone to talk to Karunanidhi and asked him for some more time to set things right. According to a source in the DMK, Karunanidhi agreed to put on hold the plan of resignations of his ministers. The source said that the chief minister one again reiterated the his party stand that the Congress party would be given more than the offered 60 to field its candidates in the upcoming poll in the state. Karunanidhi has also made it clear to Pranab that the Congress party would also not get all the constituencies it had identified, the source said.
The seven-year-old alliance reached on the verge of collapse March 5 when the DMK high level committee deciding to pull out its six ministers from the UPA government. The Congress party previously started its bargain with 90 seats, but had finally stuck to its demand for 63 seats. Its alliance partner DMK is not ready to give it more than 60 seats.
Following the latest development, the scheduled meeting of DMK ministers with Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh has been postponed from 11 am to 6 pm. Six DMK leaders who hold portfolios in the union cabinet had to submit their resignation to the prime minister at 6.30 p.m. (IST) today. The DMK leadership has made Union Minister for Textiles Dayanidhi Maran responsible to take forward the conversation with Pranab Mukherjee.
