Cong pressing for power sharing in Tamil Nadu

New Delhi, Feb 22 (PTI) Congress appears to be drivinga hard bargain with the DMK in poll-bound Tamil Nadu and ispressing for power sharing if the alliance comes to power.

The party, however, has not decided on the issue ofpower sharing in West Bengal where it is aligning with MamataBanerjee''s Trinamool Congress.

Highly placed party sources said that unlike fiveyears back when Congress decided to support the DMK governmentin the state from outside, there is a growing view that itshould participate in the governance there.

The feedback from Tamil Nadu is that if the DMDKheaded by Vijaykant contests independently, it would be to theadvantage of the ruling alliance.

Sources in the party said that the Congress, which hadcontested on 48 seats and won 35, is now pitching for 90assembly seats out of 234.

Central leaders are saying in private that the partycould finally settle for a dozen seats more than the lasttime.

It is learnt that the DMK has proposed that theCongress should contest on all seats occupied by it and bothparties can also share the "left-over" 23 seats which werelast time left for the CPI and the CPI-M.

Out of these 23 seats, a few seats will also go toother alliance partners like PMK which has been given 31 seatsto contest this time.

The party feels that it was in a strong position infour of the five election going states with Tamil Nadu beingthe only exception, a senior leader said.

A reshuffle of the AICC is expected during the currentsession and the norm of one-man one-post was unlikely to bestrictly followed.

The sources said that there could be changes in thePCCs of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu andKashmir.

The issue of holding the ''Chintan Shivir'' during therecess of the Budget Session next month also appears to havetaken a backseat, the sources said.