The Hindu : Controversy over seat allocation puts PMK in a fix

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 07, 2004

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Controversy over seat allocation puts PMK in a fix

By S. Nadarajan

PONDICHERRY, MARCH 6. With the growing protest by the ruling Congress in Pondicherry against the allocation of the lone Lok Sabha seat here to the PMK in the Democratic Progressive Alliance, one gets the impression that the PMK has an increased burden to woo the voters intensively. The responsibility of the DMK heading the DPA in Tamil Nadu also gets accentuated in view of the current political situation here.

The different wings of the Congress including the Mahila unit have already come out in revolt against the decision of the DPA to let the PMK fight the poll as a constituent of the DPA.

But the sustained stand of the functionaries of the Congress here is that there is no DPA as far as Pondicherry is concerned. Any decision on sharing of the seats was confined only to the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu.

They also refer to the AICC president Sonia Gandhi's statement during her visit to Chennai to unveil the statue of Kamaraj in which she had only mentioned 39 seats as being governed in the arrangement by the DPA. This was confirming the fact that Pondicherry seat was for the Congress. M O H Farook (Congress) had held the seat in the dissolved Lok Sabha.

Not a day passes without some unit or the other of the Congress coming out statements criticising the DMK-led DPA for allocating the seat to the PMK.

There should be a relentless persuasion by the Rangasamy-led Congress Ministry here for the seat, said a senior leader V. Balaji.

Telegram to Sonia Gandhi

The Chairman of the Pondicherry Tourism and Transport Development Corporation, N.Gangadharan, MLA said today that the Congress had contested and won the Pondicherry seat in most of the elections and hence there was no justification to let a non-Congress party field its candidate in the constituency. The decision taken under the banner of DPA was confined to 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, he told presspersons here.

Mr.Gangadharan said that he had sent a telegram to the AICC president, Sonia Gandhi, urging her to permit the party to field its candidate in the Lok Sabha poll here.

It is the fear of almost all sections in the party that Congress in Pondicherry would be sidelined and edged out slowly and steadily if the present arrangement of the PMK getting the chance to fight the Lok Sabha poll is tolerated.

The office bearers of the PCC and legislators are of the view that as there was sufficiently long period of time for the campaign to pick up, the high command would respond positively to the pleas in course of time.

The Youth Congress president, K. Pandian, also made a scathing attack on the DPA keeping the Congress out of poll battle here. He said it has been aspiration of every worker in the party that it is the Congress that should have the credit of making Sonia Gandhi a Prime Minister and the privilege should not be given to any other party, he told a press conference here today.

The Lok Sabha seat here has been by and large the citadel of the Congress. When simultaneous polls were held for the Assembly and the Lok Sabha in 1996, the DMK-TMC combine emerged victorious in the Assembly election, while the Parliamentary poll went in favour of the Congress with Farook emerging victorious.

The PCC president, V. Narayanasamy, MP, is virtually faced with the arduous responsibility of getting the nod of the high command for the party to go it alone at the poll.

The BJP enjoying the support of the AIADMK is posing a challenge to the DPA at the poll here.

It is pointed out by a section of the BJP that if the PMK were the challenger at the poll, the task of winning the poll for BJP would become facile.

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