After the political heat in Punjab, the Congress party has been facing a fresh one in Tamil Nadu as the national party has been locking horns with the state ruling DMK over seat-sharing for the upcoming local body polls in the state. The state Congress committee has been displaying that it is not happy with the DMK and the clash between the allies is growing when the polls are just two weeks away. 

The local body polls will be held for nine newly demarcated districts - Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu, Tirunelveli, Tenkasi, Kallakurichi, Villupuram, Ranipet, Vellore, and Thirupathur. The polls will be conducted in two phases on October 6 and 9. While polling will take place in 39 unions on October 6, the remaining 35 unions will cast their vote on October 9 and the counting will be held on October 12. The political parties are preparing for the election race and while the ADMK was troubled by its ally PMK after the latter decided to contest the polls independently, the recent developments suggest that the state ruling alliance is not healthy either. 

The Congress, which enjoys an alliance with the DMK, has expressed that the party wasn't awarded with a decent number of seats in seven districts that lie in the northern region of the state. According to reports, the Congress party has been given 15% of seats in the southern district of Tenkasi as the party enjoys a stronghold in this district. However, the allocation of seats to the party was just 3% to 5% when it comes to the northern districts. The Congress and DMK had held episodes of talks and they had continued even after the deadline ended for filing nominations. 

Amid the talks, several cadres in the Congress party had filed nominations without the assurance that the seats for which they had filed nomination would be won by the party. As the Congress ended up getting fewer seats in the northern districts, the state leadership had faced the challenge of either convincing the party cadres to withdraw the nominations from the seats that weren't allocated for the party or to contest independently. The Times of India had reported that this fashion of withdrawing the nominations was visible in the districts like Chengalpattu, Kancheepuram, Villupuram, Ranipet, Kallakurichi, and Vellore, and Thirupathur. 

The Congress party had negotiated with the DMK to win a significant number of local body seats in Vellore, Ranipet, and Thirupathur as this belt has a large population of minority communities. However, the Congress leaders had said that the DMK had refused to give any seat in panchayat unions in Vellore and Katpadi regions and according to Times of India, a Congress party's Vellore district functionary has said, "Our two-time chairman of Vellore panchayat union CK Devendran was not given a seat as they said he would expect chairman post again." 

It has been reported that Devendran had filed nomination papers on his own and is likely to contest independently. The Congress party wasn't given a single seat in three of the seven panchayat unions - Nemelli, Thimiri, and Arcot in Ranipet district. In Villupuram, a Congress leader has said that the DMK has refused to provide any of the 28 ward councillor seats and when Villupuram North District Congress Committee Secretary didn't get a seat despite he had expressed his wish to the party's leadership that he wants to contest in the polls. 

The deal between the DMK and the Congress had ended up with the latter contesting in nine of 140 ward councillor posts in district panchayats and 63 seats of 1,381 ward councillor posts in panchayat unions. The deal hadn't won the majority minds of Congress with a Congress MLA saying that they have been getting treated badly. Some of the Congress leaders had said that the party didn't win big in its stronghold in the southern district of Tirunelveli. As a pinch of relief, the Congress party was given 22 of 144 ward councillor seats in the panchayat unions of Tenkasi. 

Earlier, Thol. Thirumavalavan, the Chief of VCK which observes alliance with the DMK, had expressed disappointment that the seats they had demanded weren't awarded by the state ruling party. The political observers say that though the DMK holds the edge of winning the local body polls with the tag of the ruling party and through its schemes including the implementation of a 10.5% reservation quota for the Vanniyar community, which is a strong vote bank in northern districts, the ruling party wants to contest in more seats as the PMK, which runs through the Vanniyar vote bank, has decided to contest independently. 

The filing of nominations for the local body polls had begun on September 15 and ended on September 22. The scrutiny of the nomination will be held on September 23 and September 25 will be the last date to withdraw the nomination and the final list of candidates will be announced on the same day. The election will be held for 27,003 postings, including 2,901 village panchayat presidents' posts and 22,581 village panchayat ward councillors. A total of 76,59,720 voters are eligible to cast their vote in the two-phased polls. The polling will start at 7 am and end at 6 pm. The people who had tested positive for the Covid-19 pandemic and the people with the symptoms will be allowed to vote from 5 pm to 6 pm on the voting day.