By IANS,
Chennai: The Congress’ Tamil Nadu unit Tuesday welcomed the announcement of single-phase polling for the state assembly April 13 and said it hoped to soon wrap up seat-sharing talks with the ruling DMK.
“We are happy with the announcement. We wanted single-phase polling and the Election Commission has announced accordingly,” Tamil Nadu Congress chief K.V. Thangkabalu told IANS.
On the seat sharing talks with the DMK, he said: “We met Congress president Sonia Gandhi today (Tuesday) and appraised her about the talks. We expect the seat sharing negotiations to be concluded soon.”
He said no date has been fixed for the third round of talks with the DMK.
With just over 40 days to go for the polls, political parties like the DMK, Congress, AIADMK, DMDK and others have to sew up their seat sharing deals with their respective alliance partners, identify constituencies and start campaigning.
“It is now a sprint race instead of a marathon. We did not expect the polls to be held with a short period,” DMDK presidium chairman Panruti S. Ramachandran told IANS.
Asked about the conclusion of the seat sharing talks his party has begun with AIADMK, he said this would happen soon. “However, no dates have been fixed for the next round of talks,” he added.
Meanwhile, the PMK said it was ready for the polls.
“The fixing of the poll date is the Election Commission’s decision. Now all parties have to be ready and start working. We have already started doing that in many constituencies for the past four months,” PMK president G.K. Mani told IANS.