Sulking DMK strikes back,pulls out ministers

We are compelled to suspect Congress wants us out of UPA--says DMK chief.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam DMK pulled out of the Union Cabinet today,putting the Congress on probation as a fallout over the bitter and seemingly endless haggling of seat-sharing ahead of the April 13 Assembly election.

The regional ally,which has been part of the core of the UPA since its formation seven years ago,will offer issue-based,conditional support to the Union Government from now on,decided the high-level committee headed by DMK president and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi today. The party has 18 members in the Lok Sabha.

The move came after Karunanidhi fired the warning shot late on Friday night when he termed Congress demand for 63 constituencies as opposed to the 60 that DMK was willing to concede as unreasonable.

The Congress,stunned by the extreme step,was undecided on the course of actionits senior leaders were in a huddle till late Saturday night. Senior leaders conceded that the issue was serious and the option of going it alone was not ruled out.

Though the breakdown of seat-sharing talks is cited as the immediate cause for the development,the Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe into the 2G scam that landed DMK member and former Union Telecom Minister A Raja behind bars is also said to be one of the reasons behind the move.

A senior Congress leader said that the regional party wanted an assurance from the government to slow down the investigations that have taken the sleuths to the doorsteps of Karunanidhis family members. The difference between what the DMK is ready to give and what the Congress is expecting is so minorthree seatsthat it cannot affect a coalition that has been on for the past seven years, he said.

The development today has thrown open the Tamil Nadu electoral arena to all possibilities,with only five weeks left for the crucial Assembly poll. While todays development will not directly threaten Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs Government at the Centre,this would make it more dependent on other regional allies who support it from the outside.

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After the seat-sharing committees of the two parties failed to reach a resolution even after two rounds of talks,Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad,the Congress secretary in-charge of Tamil Nadu affairs,arrived in Chennai to finalise the pre-poll negotiations directly with Karunanidhi. In my discussions with him,57 seats were allotted to the Congress. He assured that he would take it to the high command and get a reply soon. Then Azad spoke from Delhi to insist that the Congress will agree only for 60 seats. The DMK agreed to it and invited them to come to Chennai to sign the deal. However,even as we waited for them,the demand was increased to 63 over phone,besides the condition that they would identify the constituencies they would contest, Karunanidhi said in his four-page statement,explaining the ground for withdrawing his MPs from the Union Cabinet.

In any of the past seat-sharing discussions that I have been part of,neither myself nor the leadership have faced such a predicament. It was due to the peculiar scenario that we decided to convene the high-level decision making committee take this important decision. By raising this unfair demand of 63 seats of their choice,the DMK was given the impression that the Congress was not interested in continuing an alliance with us,leading to the decision to pull out from the cabinet, Karunanidhi added.