New Delhi, March 8 : The Congress president Sonia Gandhi has reportedly told senior DMK leaders M K Alagiri and Dayanidhi Maran that the decision to publicly announce withdrawal of ministers from the UPA government was a unilateral one taken by the DMK, and the party should first withdraw its statement, highly placed Congress sources said.
Sonia Gandhi told the leaders on Monday night that the DMK should not have gone public with its statement against the Congress, even while the negotiations for seat sharing were in progress. "We have always valued our allies", she reportedly told the DMK leaders.
The DMK leaders reportedly assured Sonia Gandhi that their party would hopefully come out with a statement by Tuesday evening.
PTI adds; Late on Monday evening, M K Alagiri, son of DMK chief M Karunanidhi, and Maran drove to Gandhi's residence at 10,Janpath, and had a nearly 40-minute meeting.
Emerging from the meeting, neither Alagiri nor Maran spoke to the waiting mediapersons.However, sources said the talks between the two parties were stuck on the number of seats Congress would get and the choice of its constituencies.
The sources said DMK was ready to allow Congress to contest all the 48 seats it had done in the previous elections but the choice of the additional 13 seats it will give to Congress will be decided by DMK. Congress had scaled up its demand to 63 seats.
For the time being, the DMK has put on hold the resignation of its six ministers from the UPA government after Mukherjee telephoned Karunanidhi twice and urged him not to pull out his ministers from the cabinet and sought a day's time to resolve the problems.
"The withdrawal of ministers from the government has been put on hold till tomorrow," Deputy Chief Minister and DMK treasurer M K Stalin told reporters in Chennai.
Sources said that DMK made it clear that the offer of 60 seats to Congress was final and that the choice of constituencies could be negotiated.
