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AIADMK, CPI-M alliance in TN, Pondicherry

The All India Anna DMK and the Communist Party of India-Marxist today decided to forge an alliance to fight the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry.

This was decided at a meeting AIADMK chief Jayalalitha had at her Poes Garden residence with a three-member CPI-M team comprising the state secretary, N Sankariah and two central committee members T K Rangarajan and N Varadharajan.

The Marxist leaders told reporters after the hour-long meeting that today's talks did not touch upon seat sharing which would be decided during further talks.

Sankariah said the two parties decided to launch a campaign demanding the resignation of Union Home Minister L K Advani since a special CBI team was to file a charge-sheet against him and others on July 23 at Lucknow.

Since the CBI was functioning under the union home ministry, it was only fair that Advani quit office before the agency filed the charge-sheet, Sankariah said.

The Communist Party of India is also scheduled to hold alliance talks with the AIADMK tomorrow.

The CPI and the CPI-M were allies of the DMK until the DMK supported the Vajpayee governmment in the confidence motion in the Lok Sabha.

Answering a question, Sankariah said Jayalalitha's secular credentials were not in doubt.

Asked about the CPI-M joining hands with the AIADMK and the Congress-I in Tamil Nadu, while bitterly opposing the Congress-I in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, Sankariah said the politics of the three states were different from that of Tamil Nadu. The issue here was to defeat the BJP-DMK combine to prevent the conmmunal BJP from coming back to power at the Centre, he said

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