CHENNAI: The DMK and Congress on Wednesday formally announced their alliance for the Lok Sabha elections. The national party will contest in nine out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in Puducherry. 

This is the fifth time the two parties are coming together to face parliamentary polls. The main plank of the alliance is expected to be anti-incumbency of the ruling regimes both at the Centre and the State. The DMK-Congress combine had registered grand victories each time they have come together for parliamentary polls (1971, 1980, 2004 and 2009).

Interestingly, unlike the AIADMK-BJP alliance, the Congress and DMK have not finalised the pact for the Assembly bypolls expected to be held for 21 vacant seats. Talks on this will be held once the bypoll dates are announced, the party leaders said.

DMK president MK Stalin, for the first time on Wednesday, publicly acknowledged that other parties that had been friendly to DMK in the past two years would be included in the alliance. Most of these parties, such as VCK, MDMK & Left parties, were part of the third front during the 2016 Assembly polls. 
“We will hold alliance talks with friendly parties that had travelled with us in the last two years, by taking part in protests against the government, and on other public issues. Talks with them will begin on Thursday,” Stalin said, after announcing the alliance. He was accompanied by Congress leaders, including general secretary of the All India Congress Committee Mukul Wasnik. 

Congress leaders and cadre were greatly relieved as their party had secured a double-digit figure in the seat sharing. There had been speculation that DMK was negotiating hard to allocate very few seats for allies. But negotiations between DMK Rajya Sabha MP (and Stalin’s sister) MK Kanimozhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi were said to have been smooth. Political observers said that as the PMK chose not to join the DMK-led alliance, the DMK was able to grant more seats to Congress. The exact constituencies for the Congress would be finalised after talks with other allies. “It is an alliance for the people and an alliance desired by people,” said K C Venugopal, general secretary of Congress.

In recent months, DMK has been a key ally for the Congress as it attempts to build a national alliance against the BJP. Stalin was the first to propose Rahul as common Prime Ministerial candidate of the Opposition in December 2018. This bonhomie is in stark contrast to the strained ties between the two parties towards the end of the Conress-led UPA’s second term. DMK did not ally with Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Several factors, including Kanimozhi’s imprisonment in the alleged 2G spectrum scam brought the decade-long alliance to an end. The parties have become closer in the last few years as the BJP has grown.