4-member Congress team to hold seat talks with DMK

The party in-charge of Tamil Nadu and AICC general secretary Mukul Wasnik has gone to New Delhi to finalise the four-member election committee. Incumbent TNCC president EVKS Elangovan and Congress legislature party leader K Gopinath and two other nominees of the high command would be members of the committee. AICC is also expected to announce the election and manifesto committees comprising state leaders. 

“There is no limit for the election committee. AICC can accommodate all factional lords of the state to discuss the party’s election strategy in the state. But the seat sharing committee will at best have four or five members and there is no way TNCC can have factional lords leading the delegation to hold negotiations with the allies,” said a state party senior requesting anonymity. 

Meanwhile, former union finance minister P Chidambaram and former TNCC president K V Thangkabalu have camped in New Delhi to influence AICC leaders and get their men in the committees so as to nullify the influence of EVKS Elangovan who had returned from the national capital only a couple of days back after meeting AICC president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi. The DMK announced its four-member committee early last week.

 The DMK was determined to field no less than 150 candidates even as it had engaged in dialogue with Vijayakanth’s DMDK, which declared out of the blue that it would go alone. The decision of DMDK has lifted revived hopes of Congressmen who are now confident that they could get more than the 25-30 seats they were earlier tipped to get from the Dravidian major.