Sealed agreement between DMK and Congress on Stalin, Sonia Gandhi’s phone

A phone call between DMK president MK Stalin and Sonia Gandhi late on Saturday sealed the seat-sharing deal between the DMK and the Congress for the assembly elections, a national party source in Delhi said. DMK MP Kanimozhi also played a role in bringing the two parties together, sources from both parties said.

Congress is not ready to fulfill its demand for 30 seats [it later pitched for 29 seats], Mr. Stalin is revealed to have spoken to Ms. Gandhi over the phone and offered her 25 seats. Mr. Stalin also offered the Rajya Sabha seat to the Congress, although this is not in the official announcement made on Sunday morning.

“The Rajya Sabha seat offer sealed the deal for us. The top leadership of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee was brought in to discuss the issue and everyone agreed that the party should take up the proposal, ”the Congress said.

Sources in both parties said that Ms. Kanimozhi assured her of the necessity of contesting elections together with the Congress in the last four to five days.

With almost all the coalition parties agreeing to the offers made by the DMK to each of them, the Congress found it in a difficult position to go it alone or fight in another coalition – a possibility Saturday evening by the Congress Rajya Sabha MP and Former Union Minister P.W. Chidambaram gave the verdict.

The Congress leader said that after the seat sharing agreement was signed, the two parties would sit together and decide on the constituencies to be allotted to the national party in the next few days.