Chennai: CPI has been allotted five seats by the DMK for the upcoming assembly election. CPI state M Veerapandian signed an agreement with chief minister M K Stalin on Wednesday at the end of three rounds of talks.Though CPI has been allotted onse seat less than what it got to contest in 2021 assembly elections, Veerapandin said fighting for democracy and the marginalised was more important than bargaining for seat. “Our main objective in this election is to defeat BJP, and we stand with Stalin in achieving the objective. We are not less concerned about the number of seats and more concerned about continuing our fight for safeguarding democracy and the welfare of marginalised sections,” Veerapandian said.CPI is the sixth party to have completed the seat sharing talks after Congress, MDMK, IUML, Manithaneya Makkal KAtchi (MMK) and Kongunadu Makkal Desiya Katchi (KMDK). With the allocation of five seats to CPI, DMK has so far allocated 43 seats to its allies – 28 to Congress, four to MDMK, and two each to IUML, MMK and KMDK.When the seat-sharing talks began, CPI demanded more seats than what was allotted to it in 2021. But DMK asked CPI to “sacrifice a seat” for the sake of accommodating more political parties in the alliance. After a couple of rounds, CPI agreed to DMK’s demand, and the same was agreed in their executive committee meeting held at their party headquarters in Chennai on Tuesday.Meanwhile, CPM was still sticking to its demand of more seats than 2021 assembly election. Like CPI they were also allotted six seats in the last elections of which they won two.
