Tamil Nadu local polls: After wrangling for days, Congress and DMK bury the hatchet, decide to fix issues internally

Chennai: After days of wrangling over seat allocation in local polls, the Congress and DMK on Saturday buried the hatchet and decided to address issues internally and avoid going public. Taking the initiative to break the ice, Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president KS Alagiri along with his senior party colleagues called on DMK chief MK Stalin at party headquarters ‘Anna Arivalayam’ in Chennai. After the meeting, Alagiri said: “In the case of difference of opinion, it has been decided that the TNCC and DMK presidents will resolve it and other leaders from both the parties need not air their views.” Reiterating his stand that there were no issues or differences between the two parties, Alagiri said both the parties had always been united and would continue to be so. [caption id=“attachment_7926051” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of MK Stalin and AS Alagiri. PTI[/caption] He downplayed DMK leader Duraimurugan’s remark that Congress had no vote bank, saying the leader had expressed his view and there was no problem about it. Alagiri exuded confidence that his party’s alliance with the DMK would continue even beyond the 2022 Assembly polls. Following the deliberations with the Congress team, Stalin urged leaders of both parties to desist from airing their views in public to end haggling and avoid its recurrence. The DMK chief, recalling the origin of the recent differences, said Algiri had issued a statement that Congress was allocated a lesser number of the president and vice-president seats (in indirect polls) to head district panchayats and panchayat unions. Pinning the blame on Alagiri, Stalin said something like seat sharing should have been resolved through talks, but it became public following the Congress statement and it led to an undesirable exchange of views from both the sides. Asserting that continuation of verbal duel would provide fodder to political rivals and a “section of the media,” he said he wanted to end it and asked leaders of both parties not to go public over the alliance and related matters like seat sharing. After saying earlier this week that only time would tell whether ties with the Congress would go back to normalcy, DMK on Wednesday had upped the ante, saying if the national party wants to quit the alliance, it can do so. Duraimurugan, when asked about Congress’s charge that DMK violated coalition dharma and that the grand old party might leave the alliance, had said “if they want to quit, let them do so. How are we concerned, what is the loss for us?.” The DMK treasurer had said the party was not worried about Congress leaving the alliance and he was not concerned. Asked if it would not impact the votes in favour of DMK, he had said his party will not be affected and that Congress does not have a vote bank to dent his party’s prospects. Reacting to it, Congress Lok Sabha MP Karti Chidambaram, son of senior leader P Chidambaram, had asked in his twitter handle: “Why didn’t this wisdom dawn before the Vellore parliamentary bye-election? @DuraimuruganDmk @dmkathiranand.” The Vellore Lok Sabha election was held in August last and Duraimurugan’s son Kathir emerged victorious by a margin of 8,141 votes. On Jan 10, Alagiri had said Congress was not alloted a fair number of posts of local bodies chiefs by DMK and this went against “coalition dharmas”.