Cong, DMK start seat negotiations
The DMK and Congress set in motion talks on seat-sharing for the coming Assembly elections amid all the controversies surrounding the spectrum scam, CBI raids and the new ambition in the Congress camp to share power after the polls.
While TNCC president K.V. Thangkabalu, who is part of the five-member Congress panel, described the hour-long session at the DMK headquarters as “cordial”, sources said his party’s wish list overshot the ally’s generosity by 30 seats.
“We wanted two seats for each of the 39 Lok Sabha seats, which meant 78 in all but the DMK started with 48, the number we contested in 2006. At the end of the session, we have narrowed down our gap,” a Congress senior said, adding that his party had indicated it should get at least 64 seats at the rate of two per district (there are 32 districts in the state). The Congress panel included Union ministers P. Chidambaram and G.K. Vasan, AICC spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan and K. Jayakumar.
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Gadkari hits out at PM culprit remark
age Correspondent
Bengaluru
Feb. 20: Launching a scathing attack on both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, BJP national president Nitin Gadkari on Sunday asserted that both leaders should not take shelter under the “coalition dharma” ruse to protect the guilty or corrupt. Rather, the country expects them to uphold the ultimate dharma of punishing the guilty, he said.
Speaking at a party workers’ rally at the Palace Grounds that was organised by the state BJP unit here to commemorate completion 1,000 days in office by the first ever BJP government in the south, Mr Gadkari asked, “What is coalition dharma? Does it mean protecting the corrupt?” He alleged that the Congress was known for misusing anything and everything, be it the coalition dharma or secularism: “In the name of secularism, the Congress divided the country prior to Independence as well as post-Independence too. Now, they seemed to obsessed with the word ‘coalition dhrama’ and have started giving an altogether new meaning to this word by their actions — swearing to protect the corrupt.”
he remarked.
Mr Gadkari also accused the Congress of shying away from taking action on black money stashed in foreign banks for fear that it would expose its own leaders. “When the top court itself asked the Union government why it is not disclosing names of people having such accounts, they keep hushing it up by stating that any such move is not in the interests of the nation. How can it be?” he asked angrily.
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