Chennai: The strains in the alliance between the Congress and the DMK have been ironed out with the latter accepting Congress' demand for 63 seats, according to informed sources.
They said the deal would be signed either this evening or tomorrow.
The patch-up was made possible by prolonged negotiations held by the DMK’s Union ministers Dayanidhi Maran and M. K. Alagiri with the Congress senior Pranab Mukherjee. Later, Mr Maran was closeted for long in Mr Mukherjee’s chamber at the Parliament House, where Mr Ahmed Patel and Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad also joined them.
It is learnt that the DMK had persuaded its ally, the PMK to part with two seats from its quota of 31 and also the Indian Union Muslim League to give the Congress one seat out of the three allotted to it.
The DMK had threatened to pull out its six ministers from the Union government accusing the Congress of going back on its word, given during the visit of Mr Azad to Chennai to meet DMK president M. Karunanidhi last week, that the party would settle for 60 seats, as against the offer of 58 seats by the DMK.
The six DMK ministers had gone to Delhi with their resignation letters to be handed over to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday, but it was put on hold while Mr Maran and Mr Alagiri reopened patch-up talks with the Congress leadership.
Their meeting with AICC president Sonia Gandhi on Monday night did not bear fruit and it looked like the talks had collapsed for good, but then, the derailed alliance was brought back on to the tracks by Mr Maran persisting with Mr Mukherjee and others in the Congress, while Mr Alagiri managed to convince father Karunanidhi to give in to the Congress demand for 63 seats.
Later in the evening, Mr Mukherjee and Mr Azad called on Sonia Gandhi along with Mr Maran and Mr Alagiri to clinch the final pact, a face-saving deal for the DMK.
The seat-sharing agreement is likely to be signed at the DMK headquarters in Chennai by state Congress president K.V.Thangkabalu with the DMK leaders either this evening or on Wednesday.