Chennai: Days after the State Congress accused the DMK of not allocating ”fair number of seats” to it in the civic polls in Tamilnadu, the latter on Monday boycotted a crucial meeting called by the Congress in New Delhi to evolve a strategy against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), leading to speculation that the alliance between the two parties might break anytime.
DMK Parliamentary leader T R Balu has said, ”At a time when Tamilnadu Congress Committee president K S Alagiri has accused our leader M K Stalin of not abiding by coalition dharma, how can we participate in the meeting? He should have avoided issuing such a strong and open statement. Instead, he should have met our leader if he had any grouse.”
According to Balu, Alagiri’s statement has caused much damage and embarrassment to the DMK and nothing has been done to undo it.
Sources in the DMK said their high command is upset with the State Congress leaders for saying that the DMK was not maintaining alliance dharma in distribution of posts in the civic bodies.
”We have been treating Congress with all respect and enough number of seats were given to it. Though Congress faced a huge defeat across the country in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, it won nine out of the 10 MP seats it contested in Tamilnadu only because of our support,” the sources claimed.
Last week, in a joint statement here, Alagiri and Congress Legislature Party leader K R Ramasamy slammed the DMK for ”their party not getting adequate number of posts of local bodies chiefs. Of the 27 district panchayat chief posts, not even one, not even that of a Vice-President has been given to us so far. We regret to inform this is against coalition dharma,” Alagiri and Ramasamy said.
Same was the case with panchayat union posts where the party has been allotted just two of the 303 posts, they added. They alleged the ”Congress has been denied opportunity” in seats that where even recommended by the DMK leadership apparently to the local level functionaries.
Alagiri meets Sonia
While sources claimed that K S Alagiri has sent a letter to DMK chief M K Stalin expressing regret for his statement, the TNCC president today met his party supremo Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi to present ”his side of the story”.