After marathon talks since Tuesday with its prospective allies failed to provide a breakthrough, the BJP asked the PMK to decide by Thursday evening if it wanted to be part of the front or not.
A highly placed source in the BJP said talks with the PMK and the DMDK continued all through Wednesday to end the deadlock that prevailed in seat allotment. While the PMK seemed to have agreed on numbers by accepting the offer of eight seats, it was still not willing to compromise on certain constituencies which overlapped with those of the DMDK.
Matters were further complicated on Wednesday as the AINRC in Puducherry, a seat which the PMK was eyeing, announced its entry into the NDA and its candidate for the Lok Sabha polls.
However, the DMDK had made it clear to the BJP that it cannot wait forever for the talks to conclude as party president Vijayakant was set to begin his campaign tour on Friday. In the BJP front too, leaders said the Central leadership wanted the list for the constituencies the party was contesting forwarded by Thursday as it wanted to release a consolidated list at the national level either on Thursday or Friday. “We had invited our president Rajnath Singh to visit Tamil Nadu to announce the alliance. But since the talks were still going on, he had postponed it,” confirmed a senior leader.
