Congress, DMK seal deal –UPA alliance holds firm

Feuding UPA allies, the Congress and the DMK, have stepped out of ministerial bungalows in Lutyens' Delhi where they have been huddled over the weekend in parleys, to announce that they have settled differences over a seat-sharing formula for the local assembly polls in the state of Tamil Nadu. As expected, the Congress has ensured its pound of flesh and walks away with 63 seats.

Regional ally DMK has said the party supremo M Karunanidhi will decide where the additional three seats for the Congress will come from – either from the DMK's kitty or one each from the DMK and two other regional allies.

The results may be seen as a victory for the Indian National Congress's hardballing tactics but a scam tainted DMK and its bandwagon of allies faces an uphill task in the elections    against a rival political formation led by the AIDMK.

The ruling UPA alliance has been caught in debilitating scandals at the centre with minsters from the DMK in the eye of the storm. One particular minster, A Raja, is currently in custody of law enforcement authorities over his alleged involvement in a telecom spectrum-allocation scam that runs into thousands of crores of rupees.

Speculation has it that DMK may provide 61 of the Congress's quota of seats while one seat each may come out of the share given to the IUML and the PMK.

The seat sharing talks moved through the full gamut of all that constitutes domestic political drama with the DMK even walking out of the UPA alliance at one stage raising the spectre of a destabilised government at the centre.