AIADMK to contest 23 seats; PMK gets 6

Ending weeks of hard bargaining, the AIADMK and MDMK today reached a seat-sharing agreement under which Vaiko's party has been allotted four seats.

With this, the AIADMK headed by Jayalalithaa has completed the seat-sharing exercise with all its partners including the PMK, CPI, CPI(M) and MDMK to contest the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in Puducherry.

Under the seat sharing arrangement, AIADMK would contest 23 seats, PMK six, MDMK four and three each by CPI and CPI(M). The Puducherry seat has been allotted to PMK.  The agreement with MDMK was delayed due to differences
over the number of seats as well as constituencies to be allotted to Vaiko led MDMK. The party has finally been given
Virudhunagar, Thanjavur, Erode and Nilgiris constituencies.

After finalising pact with the MDMK this morning Jayalalithaa released the list of her party candidates, which
included former Union Minister M Thambidurai who will be contesting from Karur.

Former state Ministers Semmalai would contest from Salem, M C Sampath from Cuddalore, Raja Kannappan from
Shivaganga and V Satyamurthy from Ramanathapuram.  Two women candidates figured in the list included
former Vice-Chancellor of Manonmaniam University Sinthyapandiyan from Tuticorin.

Jayalalithaa announced that she would her launch poll campaign on April 16.