Sonia Briefed About Cong-DMK Seat-Sharing Talks

The five-member Congress committee led by Home Minister P Chidambaram to hold seat-sharing talks with DMK for the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, due in May, today met party chief Sonia Gandhi and is understood to have briefed her about their discussions with DMK on Sunday.

The committee members -- Chidambaram, G K Vasan, Jayanthi Natarajan, K V Thangkabalu and Jayakumar -- accompanied by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad met Gandhi and discussed the seat-sharing issue.

Sources said the team briefed Gandhi about the first meeting with the DMK team on Sunday. "They sought the Congress president's opinion on the seat-sharing talks," they said.

Sources said Congress is seeking more than 80 seats this time as compared to 48 in 2006.

Central leaders are saying in private that the party could finally settle for a dozen seats more than the last time.

It is learnt that the DMK has proposed that the Congress should contest on all seats occupied by it and both parties can also share the "leftover" 23 seats which were last time left for the CPI and the CPI-M.

Out of these 23 seats, a few seats will also go to other alliance partners like PMK which has been given 31 seats to contest this time.