WEB DESK
The DMK and the congress party have sealed seat-sharing agreement today. The congress will field its candidates in 25 of the total of 234 seats in the state Assembly. Talks in both the AIADMK and the DMK camps as well as the other fronts over seat-sharing with their remaining partners are still going on.
The Congress will contest in 25 Assembly seats and in the byelection to the Kanniyakumari Lok Sabha seat that fell vacant after the death of H. Vasanthakumar. It will also get one Rajya Sabha seat. In a late night development, party leaders Dinesh Gundu Rao, K.S. Alagiri and K.R. Ramasamy met DMK president M.K. Stalin at his residence.
“We have reached an agreement. We will be signing the agreement tomorrow around 10 a.m.,” Mr. Rao told media
after the meeting.
The Congress was left with not many options after the DMK refused to concede its demand for 30 seats. Many in the Congress had been talking of walking out of the alliance if the demand was not met. Some leaders also floated the option of tying up with actor-politician Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam as a last resort.
National and state-level leaders of major political parties are on intense campaign trails, ahead of the April-6 Assembly Elections. Senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah is canvassing for the party in Kanyakumari District today.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah launched his roadshows in the southernmost district of Kanyakumari, after offering special pujas in the famous Suchindram temple. He is participating in the roadshows organised by the party in Nagercoil.
The Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat goes for the bye-poll where the party’s ex-Union Minister Pon. Radhakrishnan will take on the candidate of the party’s arch-rival, the AICC.