India’s Congress saves majority

INDIA: India’s ruling Congress Party said Tuesday it had clinched a deal with a key regional ally, allowing the embattled ruling coalition to retain its Parliamentary majority.

At the weekend, the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) said it was snapping a seven-year-old alliance with Congress in a row between the parties over seat-sharing in next month’s elections in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. “I am happy to announce that the DMK and Congress leadership have finally decided the number of seats among ourselves,” Ghulam Nabi Azad, spokesman for the Congress party, told reporters in New Delhi.

“This is a winning alliance,” Azad said after days of heated negotiations. The DMK is the governing party in Tamil Nadu state, where it has been ruling in alliance with the Congress.

The DMK’s 18 seats give the Congress-led coalition a thin parliamentary majority in the 545-seat decision-making lower house. The Indian government was not at risk of falling as the DMK had promised to give the administration “issue-based support” and Congress could have obtained backing from other allies outside the national coalition.

But the DMK’s announcement that it was quitting the federal coalition had fuelled worry about political stability in India, which is already reeling from a slew of major corruption scandals.

Relations between the Congress and DMK were already under strain over one of the biggest corruption scandals facing Asia’s third-largest economy that is centred on a DMK former minister. A. Raja, an ex-telecom minister belonging to the DMK has been jailed over allegations that he rigged the 2008 sale of mobile phone licences — costing the national exchequer up to $40 billion.

By salvaging the alliance Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been handed some respite, although his ability to steer the fractious coalition has been called into question by critics who have been dismayed by the tide of corruption scandals. NEW DELHI, Wednesday, AFP