The Congress on Wednesday has hinted that it will enter into a "friendly fight" with its allies in certain constituencies of Puducherry.
The 30 constituencies of the Union Territory (UT) will go the polls on April 9, with votes to be counted on May 4.
This comes after the Congress and DMK managed to agree on seat-sharing for the Puducherry polls, which, after the exit of a disgruntled Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), turned into 16 seats for the national party and 14 seats for the DMK.
VCK founder Thol. Thirumavalavan announced on Tuesday that the party would contest three seats independently (Oussudu, Nettapakkam, and Ozhukarai) while also supporting the alliance in other aspects.
However, the two allies allegedly went back and forth on 5-6 seats, which included Nellithope, Kalapattu, Muthiyalpet, Thattanchavadi and Uzhavarkarai, as per a Samayam Tamil report.
This is because the Congress wants to retain its long-time upper hand in the UT, while the DMK, which won a large number of seats in the 2021 polls to become the main Opposition party in the Puducherry Assembly, looks to increase its influence.
In order to resolve the issues over the seats—that both sides have filed nominations for—and to prevent those seats from causing a rift in the hard-earned alliance, the two sides decided to turn it into a friendly contest over the seats.
However, the details of the candidates in the fray for the friendly contests will only be revealed when the Congress releases its candidate list for Puducherry, expected by Thursday.
Thursday (March 26) is the deadline that the Election Commission (EC) has set for candidates to withdraw their nomination papers in Puducherry.
"Yes, I don’t think the DMK has issued any statement regarding the friendly fight. Our candidates have already started their campaign," said All India Congress Committee's (AICC) official spokesperson Dolly Sharma at a recent media interaction at the Puducherry Pradesh Congress Committee office.
She had been responding to a question of whether the DMK had agreed to the friendly fight in the UT.