The Congress and the UPA government at the Centre got a day?s breather on the prospect of ministers belonging to the DMK resigning from the Central government and the 18 MPs of the DMK providing it outside support. A day of hectic lobbying by the big guns of the Congress, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and Ghulam Nabi Azad made sure that for today at least, the six DMK ministers in the UPA government did not keep their six o?clock appointment with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
After keeping mum and watching the developments on Sunday, the Congress swung into action. Mukherjee not only met Congress president Sonia Gandhi but also spoke to DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi twice over the phone to settle matters. ?We received a call from Pranab Mukherjee and have decided to hold back the resignations by a day,? said Tamil nadu deputy chief minister M K Stalin.
In Delhi, however, the talk was about a compromise formula on seat sharing which spoke of congress fighting its old 48 seats, plus 12 extra seats this time in constituencies which were to be negotiatied. While that added to the 60 seats already offered to the Congress by the DMK, there was talk that three seats promised to the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) would be shifted to the Congress.
Congress managers remained quiet on the formula, but indicated that that was not the main stumbling block to this game of brinkmanship. The main worry in Chennai is the imminent questioning Karunanidhi?s daughter, M Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum scam by the CBI. On that, the Congress finds itself in an impossible position, unable to swing anything on a Supreme Court monitored probe.
?This is a negotiation, they are playing hard ball, so are we. We have been given a day more with Wednesday being the outside limit for clearing this issue,? said a senior Congress leader. ?With just a month to go for Assembly polls, this is not the time to switch allies and break alliances,? the leader maintained.
The day began with DMK ministers flying in to Delhi from Chennai, with the intention of handing in their resignation. Textile minister Dayanidhi Maran met Mukherjee in the morning, after which the latter briefed Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Then Mukherjee, Azad and Gandhi?s political secretary Ahmad Patel went into a huddle after which a second phone call was made to M Karunanidhi. It was only after that, that the decision to postpone the resignation was made. Without the DMK?s support, the government is essentially in a minority and the only replacement for them, Mulayam Singh Yadav?s Samajwadi Party with 20 MPs is not a reliable option. Some home truths seemed to have been exchanged between the two long time allies, and the crisis has been postponed for yet another day.