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May 13, 2002
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TMC decides to merge with Congress

The Tamil Maanila Congress, floated by veteran Congress politician G K Moopanar in 1996 after his opposition to the Congress party's alliance with the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam for the state assembly and Lok Sabha elections that year, decided on Sunday to merge with the parent party.

Moopanar's son and TMC president G K Vasan announced the decision after a meeting with All-India Congress Committee observers Oscar Fernandes and Ramesh Chennithala, who were deputed by party president Sonia Gandhi to discuss the issue.

The three politicians said the modalities of the merger would be discussed at a meeting between Gandhi and Vasan at New Delhi soon.

During the meeting, TMC politicians are understood to have demanded 75 per cent of the district Congress committee president posts in Tamil Nadu, leadership of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, a seat in the Congress Working Committee, and an AICC post for Vasan.

Though AICC observers denied that the issue had come up for discussions, they said all these matters would be sorted out at the meeting between Gandhi and Vasan, who is leaving for New Delhi on Monday.

Following differences with then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao, who struck a deal with the AIADMK for the Lok Sabha and Tamil Nadu assembly elections in 1996, Moopanar floated the TMC on April 3 that year and aligned with the DMK.

The DMK won a landslide victory and the TMC bagged all 20 Lok Sabha seats it had contested.

But the party's popularity started waning from the 1998 Lok Sabha election, when it won just three seats.

In the 1999 general election, the third front headed by the TMC drew a blank, forcing the party to align with the once-anathema AIADMK for the 2001 assembly election.

Moopanar, a known loyalist of the Nehru family, regularly kept in touch with Sonia Gandhi even after the TMC was floated.

After Gandhi took over as Congress president, he toyed with the idea of returning to the parent party. But the moves suffered a setback when he died last year.

PTI

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