Congress troubleshooter and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had a telephonic conversation with DMK chief and Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi and requested him to reconsider his party's decision to withdraw its ministers from the Union Cabinet and extend only issue based support to the United Progressive Alliance Government.Earlier, Mukherjee also met DMK leader and Textile Minister Dayanidhi Maran, who is in New Delhi to reportedly submit his resignation along with five other DMK minister. Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Sonia's political secretary Ahmed Patel were also present during the meeting.
Mukherjee also held consultations with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P Chidambaram.
However, the DMK has maintained that its ministers would meet the Prime Minister on Monday evening and hand over their resignation letters.
Sources say that the handing over of resignation letters by the DMK minister has been delayed to 6.30 PM because there are last minute efforts to try and resolve the differences.
The DMK on Saturday decided to pull out of UPA Government at the Centre and withdrew its ministers from the Cabinet following breakdown in talks over seat sharing for Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
A DMK resolution, passed during the party's high-level meeting in Chennai on Saturday, said, "the Congress does not want us to continue in the alliance".
The Congress wanted to contest 63 in seats but the DMK was not willing to spare more than 60. The DMK has been reluctant to spare more seats because after allocating 60 seats to the Congress, the DMK would be left with just 122 for itself. And if it conceded 63, i
