Senior Congress leaders and Union ministers Vayalar Ravi and Ghulam Nabi Azad will lead the party’s team to negotiate with the DMK about seats in the coming Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
While Mr Azad is the AICC general secretary in charge of the party affairs in the state, Mr Ravi knows the political profile of Tamil Nadu very well and is aware of compulsions of coalition politics.
Though the party has yet to decide when to begin this exercise, it is confident of getting more seats than the last time mainly because the PMK is sending conflicting signals on joining the DMK-led front and the Left moved to the AIADMK-led front.
The Congress managers in New Delhi are tightlipped on the issue of sharing power with the DMK if the latter retains power. But it is sure to join a Trinamul Congress-led front in West Bengal and leading the UDF in Kerala after realising that the Left Front governments in these states are on the way out.
Meanwhile, the Congress on Thursday gave enough indications that there was no trouble to its alliance with DMK despite the party strongly backing former telecom minister A. Raja and described the move as the ally’s “internal matter”.
Senior party leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity, sought to point out that the DMK has not spoken anything against the Congress and that it was natural for its southern partner “to speak favourably for their old colleague who was a five-time MP.”
Party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, “It is not appropriate for any political party to comment on decisions of another party. Whatever decision the DMK has taken or not taken is its internal matter. It is not for the Congress to comment on it.”
In a resolution passed by its top decision-making body during the day, the DMK said in Chennai that Raja’s arrest did not prove his guilt in the 2G spectrum case and accused the Opposition of trying to “malign” the party on the issue.
Mr Singhvi also did not find anything wrong in the DMK giving a clean chit to Mr Raja and added: “We are not commenting on his (Raja) being guilty or not guilty” but at the same time claimed a high moral ground on action in corruption cases.
He said the true test for any party in government is not that an allegation will not surface, but the action it takes when such a thing emerges.