Puducherry/Chennai, March 21 Negotiations between allies DMK and Congress regarding the April 9 Assembly elections in Puducherry have reached a standstill. The national party has expressed its dissatisfaction with the 9:21 formula offered by its southern ally, which is now proposing a revised deal.
The two parties are preparing for the possibility of separately contesting the elections if there is no agreement on seat-sharing.
Parleys between the two parties have remained in a deadlock allegedly due to a "leadership dispute" and "disagreement" over the number of seats.
AICC in-charge for Puducherry, Girish Chodankar, said on Saturday that the DMK's offer of seats was "unacceptable" to the Congress, which wanted to lead the alliance in the Union Territory, where single-phase polls to 30 seats will be held on April 9.
The DMK's push for a revised 14:14 seat distribution formula is also not acceptable to the Congress.
The seat-sharing talks between the two parties are deadlocked with the DMK offering nine seats to the grand old party and insisting that it would contest from 21 constituencies in the elections, for which March 23 is the last date for filing nomination papers.
The elections will be held on April 9, and the counting of votes will take place on May 4.
"The local teams of both parties are still discussing this matter. What they have offered is around 14-14 (revised one), an equal number of seats, and the remaining three for alliance parties. This formula is not acceptable to us," Chodankar told reporters in Chennai.
Also, the 9:21 seats formula for the Congress and DMK was unacceptable to the Congress though the party "drastically came down," he said, and added this was a reversal of the traditional practice in Puducherry where the Congress contested from 21 seats and allocated 9 to the DMK.
"So, today both parties will take a call and close the lines so that we can jointly form the government," the AICC leader said, post-elections.
"It is a very crucial moment. The discussion was going on for quite a long time with the conventional approach that in Tamil Nadu the DMK leads the alliance and in Puducherry the Congress heads the alliance," he added.
In the past, the Congress contested 21 seats and DMK from 9.
"This time we are insisting that what happened in the last election, especially how the BJP used the Enforcement Directorate and CBI and took away our leaders. So, with no leaders left, we gave important seats to the DMK now," Chodankar explained.
Senior leaders—former Chief Minister V Narayanasamy and PCC president V Vaithilingam are among the seven-member Congress panel involved in negotiating with the DMK team under parliamentarian T R Baalu.
Chodankar indicated that the Congress has readied the list of candidates for all 30 seats and may contest from them if talks fail.
The DMK, too, is gearing up to field its candidates for all the constituencies if consensus is not reached, a source in the party said.
The situation follows a similar pattern in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, where talks between the two prolonged ahead of the April 23 polls, over issues including power-sharing and Congress' demand for more seats.
Finally, the national party settled for 28 seats.