Congress, DMK to have poll tie-up

New Delhi: Ending the suspense, the Congress has finally decided to revive its alliance with DMK for the April-May TN Assembly polls but a formal announcement about the tie-up is expected to take some time.

The decision to revive the alliance with the DMK, which snapped its 9-year-old ties with the Congress in March 2013 after accusing the then UPA Government of being “insensitive” towards the Sri Lankan Tamils, has been taken by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi in consultation with his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi.

Highly-placed sources in the Congress told this newspaper that since the party has to tie-up with any of the Dravidian majors for the Assembly elections, it was decided to go with the DMK, whose leader M. Karunanidhi had extended an invitation in December to the Congress to join the alliance led by it.

With the BJP keeping its cards close to the chest and speculation that it might stitch up a poll pact with the ruling AIADMK, the Congress now felt it should grab the invitation from the DMK, said the sources.

They said PCC president E V K S Elangovan has been informed about the decision and he, along with AICC general secretary in-charge of Tamil Nadu Mukul Wasnik would hold talks with the DMK leadership on seat-sharing once the alliance is formally announced. “The DMK is trying to bring a few others into the team and that will take some time. That is the reason why we are not making the announcement now”, a party source explained.

“It was after the Bihar elections that the Congress decided to be part of the anti-BJP alliances in other states and this decision to hold hands with the DMK is part of that long-term strategy to defeat the saffron party.

The Congress had contested as part of the DMK alliance several times and the presidents of both parties shared cordial relations,” a Congress senior said. Mr Elangovan had met Mr Gandhi and  met Mr Wasnik.

Tamilisai will continue to be TN BJP chief, says Amit Shah

BJP national president Amit Shah on Saturday announced that the head of his party’s TN unit, Dr Tamilisai Sounderrajan will continue as state president, virtually handing her the mantle to steer the state unit in the coming elections. Shah announced that “Dr Tamilisai Sounderrajan, the present state president, will continue,” in the post, a brief release put up on BJP’s national website said.

The announcement  ends all speculations of a shake-up at the top level, in view of the impending Assembly polls, where the BJP is scouting for allies. A section of its leaders has also expressed willingness to face the polls without allies although BJP is wooing actor-politician Vijayakanth’s DMDK which was part of NDA’s rainbow coalition that faced the 2014 LS polls.