Chennai: The DMK is in a fix as the Congress has approached it seeking to send former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the Rajya Sabha from Tamil Nadu where biennial polls for six vacancies are due next month.
Manmohan Singh’s term in the Upper House had ended last week bringing to a close his 30-year long association with the house of elders from Assam. The Congress does not have the strength in the Assam Assembly to get him re-elected.
Sources said senior Congress leader Ahamed Patel had approached the DMK leadership requesting that it get Singh elected from Tamil Nadu.
“Already we generously parted with 10 Lok Sabha seats during the alliance talks and got nine of the Congress candidates elected - eight from Tamil Nadu and one from Puducherry - though the national party does not have any significant presence in our state.
Now they want us to give a Rajya Sabha seat as well. We wonder what our leadership would do but parting with a seat will hurt our own party aspirants,” said a second line leader of the DMK requesting anonymity.
The tenure of four AIADMK Rajya Sabha MPs and one CPI MP (D Raja), who was previously elected with DMK support, are set to end next month. DMK leader Kanimozhi, had resigned from her Rajya Sabha membership, following her election to the Lok Sabha. Her tenure too would have otherwise ended next month.
“Given our current strength in the Assembly, we can comfortably elect two candidates and go for a kill when it comes to the third candidate depending upon the first and second preference votes of the AIADMK members.
The Congress has only eight MLAs, whereas votes of 34 MLAs are needed to ensure a win in a biennial poll,” pointed out the leader. The problem for the DMK is that it has already committed one Rajya Sabha berth for MDMK''s Vaiko as part of the pre-Lok Sabha poll deal.
