The DMK wants to contest enough seats to be able to win a majority on its own, party sources said. We discussed the seat-sharing. Talking to reporters after the meeting, Mr Azad said thoughtalks on seats were discussed apart from the election strategy, no numbers were discussed.
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Azad skirted questions about the number of seats that his party would ask for.
The DMK came out of the Congress-led central government in 2013, accusing New Delhi of not handling the Sri Lanka crisis well. During the 2011 elections, the Congress was given 63 seats in the 235-member assembly, but it won just 5. We had cordial discussions.
Meanwhile, DMK leader MK Stalin said that the Congress leaders would discuss things with their leadership and get back to them.
Azad’s visit came days after the unsuccessful attempts of the DMK to woo Captain Vijayakanth’s DMDK to its camp. The IUML has been allocated five seats. “Some parties have joined DMK”.
The two parties fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections separately in Tamil Nadu but drew a blank.
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Both parties had realised the necessity to build an alliance to take on a resurgent Jayalalithaa and came together after a gap of five years, to fight the 2016 general elections together in an alliance. Now that a major party like DMDK is out of picture, it is expected that Congress would bargain for more seats. Stating that some more time was given to the DMK so that it could also think about the number of seats to be allotted to the Congress, Azad said, “we will also discuss the numbers with our high command and PCC leaders”.
