DMK to quite cabinet

UPDATED  5/3/2011 8:14:01 PM

Chennai: In a major political development DMK decided to withdraw their ministers from the union cabinet on Saturday. They had six ministers in the union cabinet. DMK took this major decision after seat sharing talks for the forthcoming state assemblyelections between Congress and DMK failed.

Earlier, the fate of the seven-year- old DMK-Congress alliance hung in balance on Saturday following"problems"in seat-sharing in poll-bound Tamil Nadu and all eyes riveted on the regional party which said it will take"proper and appropriate decision"on a tie-up.

Congress on its part said"problems"besetting the alliance with the Dravidian party would be"solved"amid unconfirmed reports that Congress President Sonia Gandhi had a telephonic talk with DMK supremo and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi over the issue of sharing of seats.

A Congress leader who did not want to be named claimed in New Delhi that everything has been sorted out. "I can assure you in our political relationship, we have sometimes some problems. We have the capacity to create problems and at the same time, solve the problems and it will be solved", Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters in New Delhi.

DMK's high-level policy making committee is due to meet this evening with Karunanidhi asking whether it was proper for Congress, which had agreed for 60 seats earlier, to now demand 63 seats over telephone.

The Congress stand that it would decide on the constituencies to be contested was highly improper, he said in a post-midnight statement in Chennai.

The DMK and the Congress have held three rounds of discussions on seat-sharing for the April 13 Assembly elections, but no headway could be made due to differences between the two parties.