Date:10/01/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/01/10/stories/2004011005161100.htm

National

`Alliance with DMK a great fall for Congress'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 9. The Bharatiya Janata Party president, Venkaiah Naidu, today charged the Congress with forging an alliance with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam "just for power".

Conceding that the main Opposition party had the right to align with any political party, he said that it was a "great fall" for the Congress to arrive at an understanding with the DMK after it brought down the I.K. Gujral Government by serving an ultimatum on him to exclude the DMK from his Government.

Mr. Naidu said the former Congress president, Sitaram Kesri, had written to the then President, K.R. Narayanan, saying that the report of the Jain Commission, set up to inquire into the circumstances leading to the assassination of the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, had indicted the DMK as a supporter of the LTTE, whose members were responsible for the assassination.

"Has the Congress lost its sensitivity to this issue? Now the Congress is saying the past is past... what a great fall... just for power," he said.

To a question whether the Paattali Makkal Katchi would follow suit and leave the NDA, Mr. Naidu's response was a terse "I don't know."

While Mr. Naidu was criticising the Congress-DMK alliance, the NDA convener, George Fernandes, separately indicated that an NDA-AIADMK alliance very much a possibility which he would not rule out.

It may be recalled that the AIADMK, which had allied with the NDA ahead of the 1998 polls, had pulled out of the NDA to bring down the Vajpayee Government leading to another general election in 1999.