DMK tries to build bridges with Opp.
The process of realignment seems to have begun with the DMK said to be building bridges with old comrades in the NDA after getting marginalised in the Congress-led UPA alliance ruling at the Centre.
DMK supremo and former Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi contacted some NDA leaders and spoke to them over the telephone recently. “I received a call from Karunanidhiji a few days ago,” a top NDA leader told this newspaper on Monday. He added, “I drew his attention to the DMK’s shift on certain core issues.”
The NDA may not be in a position to help the DMK after making the spectrum scam an issue to put key Congress ministers in the dock, but some BJP leaders do not want to antagonise an old ally with whom they had shared power in the Vajpayee government.
Senior BJP leader and former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh has said DMK MPs Kanimozhi and A. Raja as well as others accused in the 2G spectrum scam should be given bail. “Why shouldn’t they be? In what fashion are they interfering” Mr Singh asked in an interview with a TV channel. “I feel that if somebody has been charged and that charge is not of a heinous nature, like robbery, murder or any such thing... when trial is on, then that somebody should not be kept in prison because you can’t permanently deny bail. Bail by itself is a citizen’s right unless he is charged with such a crime that it must not be permitted,” he had said.
Another BJP leader, former Union minister Yashwant Sinha, supported Mr Singh’s views on this issue, saying, “Those who are in jail have a right to seek bail.”
The DMK, which has 18 members in the Lok Sabha, has realised it has no role to play in the UPA at a time when a section of the Congress is of the view that the party’s humiliating defeat in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections was due to the alliance with the Karunanidhi-led party.
The DMK had earlier shared power with the BJP-led NDA and the United Front consisting of non-BJP and non-Congress parties. But now it seems to be distancing itself from the Congress at the Centre. This has become evident from its reluctance to nominate DMK leaders to the two Cabinet-rank berths that fell vacant following the resignations of Mr A. Raja and Mr Dayanidhi Maran.
The DMK currently has one Cabinet-rank minister, Mr M.K. Alagiri, and four ministers of state — Mr S.S. Palnimanickam, Mr D. Napoleon, Mr S. Jagathrakshakan and Mr S. Gandhiselvan.
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