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TMC breaks off as DMK joins BJP front

The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu today formally decided to align with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. Piqued, the Tamil Maanila Congress announced a parting of ways with the DMK.

The DMK general council, which met in Madras to ratify the decision, said the country needs the "able, experienced and efficient leadership of Prime Minister A B Vajpayee in this hour of crisis".

With this decision, the TMC's alliance with the DMK is over, TMC president G K Moopanar announced.

Both parties had fought the 1996 general election and the 1998 Lok Sabha election as allies.

While DMK president and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi sought to defend the alliance with the BJP-led front and said his party would steadfastly adhere to secularism, Moopanar said the DMK joining hands with the BJP was unacceptable to the TMC.

Rejecting the criticism that the DMK had compromised on its Dravidian ideology, Karunanidhi asserted that the party would never subscribe to the concept of Hindutva.

Even as he was explaining his party's position, he visualised the possibility of the DMK and TMC candidates being pitted against one another in the coming election as were the Kauravas and Pandavas, though cousins, in the Mahabharat.

The DMK's decision marks a major turnaround in the state's politics with the AIADMK's erstwhile allies flocking to the DMK-led combine. While the TMC is at the crossroads, the Left parties are toying with the idea of aligning with the AIADMK.

Moopanar, a former Congress general secretary, had floated the TMC in 1996 in protest against the Congress forging an alliance with the "corrupt" AIADMK.

Despite his leanings towards the Congress, Moopanar may be left to fend for himself in the event of the revival of the AIADMK-Congress tie-up, unless he forgets the burden of the past and accepts the AIADMK.

UNI

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