After weeks of negotiations and a long rollercoaster ride, the DMK-Congress alliance pact was signed on Wednesday. The ruling DMK allocated 28 Assembly seats and one Rajya Sabha berth to Congress.
DMK leader and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin and Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) chief K. Selvaperunthagai signed the deal in the presence of AICC in-charge for Tamil Nadu, Girish Chodankar.
Chodankar was kept out of the final round of alliance talks because of the DMK's objection to his press statement on Sunday, in which he had said that the Congress was weighing options for going with actor Vijay’s TVK.
While it was speculated that Meenakshi Natarajan—who was an MP from Madhya Pradesh between 2009 and 2014—would be the frontrunner for the Rajya Sabha berth from the DMK’s kitty, a surprise name came up from the Congress: Christopher Tilak, the AICC in-charge for Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim.
He has served in the SC/ST wing of the TNCC, the AICC youth wing, and was in charge of the national party in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
An engineering graduate, Tilak was also a hockey player and is considered to be a close associate of Rahul Gandhi.
Sources say that the reason for choosing Tilak was a prompt from the DMK leadership to have a candidate with a base in the state and also a minority voice.
Incidentally, Tilak’s candidature has drawn huge attention, in addition to a few voices of dissent from within the TNCC, as a few Congress leaders like Sudarsana Natchiyappan and K.V. Thangkabalu had been waiting for a Rajya Sabha berth.
However, AICC’s decision to go for young faces, backed by DMK’s prompts, ensured Tilak being chosen for the Rajya Sabha seat.
Hailing from Tiruchirappalli and connected to one of the leading education institutions in the district, his candidature promises yet another national voice from the south for the Congress.