With hardly five days to go for the filing of nominations to the April 13 elections, the CPI and CPI (M) on Monday evening agreed to accept AIADMK's offer of 10 and 12 seats, respectively, thus ending the stalemate between the parties over seat-sharing. However, the impasse between AIADMK and MDMK still continues.
CPI's state secretary D. Pandian and CPI (M)'s state secretary G. Ramakrishnan met AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa and finalised the seat-sharing pact at the end of prolonged talks.
“We will be happy if we win all the seats and all the more happy if our alliance wins all the 234 constituencies,” Mr Pandian said in reply to a query on whether he was happy over the allocation of ten seats.
Emerging out of Ms Jayalalithaa's Poes Garden residence after inking the pact, he said the actual constituencies that have been allotted would be announced later.
“It is not the issue of getting some seats more or some less. We go by our political agenda which is to defeat the DMK-led
front,” Mr Ramakrishnan and Mr Rangarajan told reporters. Asked whether they had not settled down for lesser number compared to 2006 Assembly elections when they got 13 seats, they said, "it was a different situation last time. Now we have decided to strive for the victory of the AIADMK combine.”
Sources said that the CPI has agreed for nine seats but the hard negotiation by the CPI (M) have helped it getting one more seat.
The CPI (M) has nine legislators and the CPI six, at present. With Monday's pact, AIADMK has finalised accords for 74 seats with 10 parties allotting 41 to DMDK, two each to the PT and the AISMK, three to the MNMK and one each to the Republican Party of India, the All India Forward Bloc and the AIMMK.
It is yet to finalise the seat-sharing agreement with its long-term ally, the MDMK, led by Vaiko.