Under the agreement signed by DMK president M Karunanidhi and MDMK chief Vaiko, the MDMK gets Sivakasi, Tindivanam, Palani (won by it in the last polls), Pollachi (SC) and Tiruchengode, the two leaders announced.

The pact came after the DMK relented and agreed to part with Tiruchengode, for which it had named the candidate in the morning. The MDMK also gets Nattam Assembly seat, where a by-election is due.

Within an hour of entering into an agreement with the MDMK on seat-sharing, DMK announced the third and final list of its candidates for the coming Lok Sabha polls.

According to a DMK press release here, well-known film actor Chandrasekhar will be fielded in Dindigul, K C Palanisamy in Karur and K G S Arjun in Gobichettipalayam. All the three are new candidates.

Earlier in theday, the DMK had released the second list, comprising four candidates, including for Tiruchengode, which it later gave to the MDMK. The DMK announced the first list on Saturday comprising 12 candidates.

With this, the DMK has announced candidates for all the 18 seats it is contesting as part of the NDA. The DMK had given nine seats to the PMK and TRC, to be shared among them, six to BJP, five to MDMK and one each to MGR-Kazhagam and MGR-ADMK. The agreement with MDMK came after trouble erupted on allocation of constituencies and DMK not seeing eye to eye on seat identification. Apart from the three constituences, Tindivanam, Palani and Sivakasi, won last time, MDMK had sought two seats from a list of three constituencies (Thanjavur, Tiruchengode and Tirunelveli) identified by it. DMK while agreeing to give the constituencies won by the party last time, was not willing to give the other two seats as sought by MDMK.

In fact, DMK had gone ahead and released its list of candidates for the constituencies soughtby MDMK clearly sending out a signal that it was not willing to consider MDMK's demand.

The Front's other two constituents TRC and PMK were however in the midst of a tug-of-war over the number of seats. DMK had allotted nine seats to both the parties. TRC wants to contest in two while PMK is not willing to give more than one. TRC leader Vazhapadi Ramamurthi has threatened that his party would not contest the polls if it was not offered two seats by PMK.

The unity of NDA is very important if BJP has to get a significant number of seats in Tamil Nadu. Last elections its alliance got 30 seats and political observers were projecting a similar victory this time too. But the recent happenings should worry BJP as any break-up in alliance would only hinder the chances of the alliance's comprehensive victory.