Wednesday, March 22 2006 09:49 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Chennai: The Congress and the DMK yesterday (Mar 21,2006)night had a marathon discussion and hard bargaining on the identification of seats to be contested by Congress in the forthcoming assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

After a three-hour long talks with the DMK's poll negotiation committee, the Congress working committee member, Veerappa Moily and DMK chief M Karunanidhi told reporters that 'substantial progress had been made in the discussions which would continue tomorrow also after which an agreement would be signed'.

Karunanidhi said that the talks with PMK would be concluded very soon and the full list of constituencies to be contested by each parties in the DPA would be released in a couple of days.

Union Ministers P Chidambaram, Mani Shankar Iyer, G K Vasan, E V K S Elangovan and TNCC chief M Krishnaswamy represented the Congress, while DMK was represented by its chief Karunanidhi, treasurer N Veerasamy, Deputy General Secretary M K Stalin, Union Ministers Dayanidhi Maran, A Raja and Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan in the talks.