Widening rift? DMK to go without Cong in local polls

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a key ally of Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, on Wednesday announced it would contest coming local body elections in Tamil Nadu on its own, saying alliances were required only for Lok Sabha and assembly polls.

"After deep consideration, DMK decides that there is no necessity to forge political alliances for local body elections (due next month)," party chief M Karunanidhi said.

Alliances were required only for assembly and Parliament polls, he said in a statement in Chennai on Wednesday night.

Karunanidhi said DMK had been forging alliances with like-minded parties with the aim of ensuring a secular and progressive government at the Centre and a democratic rule at the state level.

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The decision comes in the backdrop of the severe drubbing DMK received in the April assembly elections and increasing strains in its alliance with Congress since the 2G spectrum scam surfaced, leading to the arrest of Karunanidhi's daugther Kanimozhi.

A section of state Congressmen, including Youth Congress
chief Yuvraj and senior party leader E V K S Elangovan, have been opposing alliance with DMK for the local body polls.

During the run-up to the last assembly polls, the seven-year old DMK-Congress ties faced a near collapse following differences over seat-sharing but the two parties managed to overcome them.

After reviving its ties with Congress, DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance had won the 2006 assembly and local body polls and came on top in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections also.

However, the Jayalalithaa-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam stormed back to power in the last assembly polls winning a landslide, pushing the DMK to the third place behind actor-politician Vijaykant-led DMDK.

Elaborating on the party's stand on alliances, Karunanidhi said DMK had been forming alliances with the aim of preventing emergence of "communal and anti-people" power centres.

"Considering that everyone wanted people's issues such as health, roads, education and drinking water facilities should form the basis and not politics or policies, DMK, after deep consideration, has decided that there was no necessity to form alliances for the local body polls," he said.