Tamil Nadu Congress ‘seeks’ Deputy Chief Minister post, only to deny it later.
Chennai: Days after the DMK general council convened for making party officer bearer appointments, DMK president M.K. Stalin called its party cadres to work and ensure victory in 2021 elections by keeping differences away. This comment of Stalin was seen as an effort to water down the growing differences inside the party.
When this seemed settled, on Friday Tamil Nadu Congress Chennai west district office bearers called for an executive and “passed” 12 resolutions which included a demand for a deputy Chief Minister post for the Pradesh Congress and the resolutions were also printed and sent to the party high command.
Immediately after the information spread, another statement was issued by the same secretary of the Chennai west denying any such resolutions were passed during the executive meeting.
Clarifying about the incident, Congress spokesperson Americai Narayanan said: “It is the aspiration of cadres of any party to see their party occupy the power seat. There is nothing wrong in it, but the way it was communicated is not right. It has to be taken in a right spirit and DMK and Congress share alliance on principle. We know our heights and we have proved in the last parliamentary elections that both the parties need each other.”
For the question of seat-sharing in the coming 2021 state elections with DMK, he said that he hoped that the Tamil Nadu Congress will seek 60 seats as “we have proved ourselves during the previous elections”.
Political analysts say that though the Congress has done much better in parliamentary elections, their performance in the last Assembly elections will be considered and questioned during the seat negotiations. They also highlight that the DMK is strongly banking on the anti-incumbency votes this time and they will be contesting in majority of the seats, leaving less space for their alliance partners and Congress might end up not getting the number of seats which they were allocated in the last election.
DMK spokespersons say that talks related to seat sharing will be discussed only during the run-up to the elections and as far as the Congress resolution is concerned, they declined to comment on it, saying that is the Congress’ internal matter.