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Time is running out for All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief J Jayalalitha and Tamil Maanila Congress founder-president G K Moopanar, who are seeking to extend their 'secular' front in Tamil Nadu to neighbouring Pondicherry.
But with Congress leaders from the Union territory firm on their demand to keep government formation in abeyance until after the polls, the Pattali Makkal Katchi wants the AIADMK leadership to talk directly to Sonia Gandhi and find an early way out of the impasse.
"The Congress high command has to come out with a clear decision on the alliance in Pondicherry," a PMK source said, referring to party founder Dr S Ramadoss's meeting with Jayalalitha on Monday. "They seem to be playing for time, by letting Chief Minister P Shanmugam and PCC president V Narayanaswamy hold talks with Jayalalitha, now that Moopanar too seems to have given up on the Congress line."
"It's for the Congress high command to decide, not the Pondicherry leaders. With the Tehelka tapes issue, and the exit of the PMK and the Trinamul Congress from the NDA at the Centre, Sonia Gandhi has to decide if she wants the five Lok Sabha members of the PMK on her side if and when the need arises," he said.
The AIADMK also seems sympathetic. "After all, the PMK walked out of the Vajpayee government even before Tehelka," a source in the party said. "The PMK needs to be compensated for the risk it took."
Further, PMK sources argued, "There is no truth in the Congress claims of supremacy in Pondicherry, where it got the chief ministership by accident, after the TMC pulled out of the DMK-led coalition, which had won the assembly election in 1996."
While Moopanar is eager to avoid contradictory and self-defeating alliances in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, the AIADMK and PMK are not sure about the Congress strategy. "They seem to be working at cross-purposes to the larger strategy evolved by Jayalalitha and Moopanar," the AIADMK source said.
A TMC strategist admitted, "You cannot blame the PMK cadres if they turn against the Congress-TMC nominees in Tamil Nadu if things don't work out in Pondicherry."
It is this possibility that is making the PMK leadership restless. A three-cornered contest in Pondicherry would give the PMK a larger number of seats to contest, but it would leave the party with very little time to run an effective campaign. This, of course, is apart from the revival of seat-sharing disputes with the AIADMK, which may not be willing to give the PMK more than the 10 seats that it has been allotted in the 30-member assembly.
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