Chennai, Dec 12: Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and CWC member K Vijayabhaskara Reddy held discussions with AIADMK(J) supremo J Jayalalitha at her residence in Chennai on Thursday, and is understood to have cleared the decks for an electoral alliance between the two parties for the Lok Sabha polls.

Congress sources expressed the hope that the alliance would be clinched shortly. The percentage of seat sharing among the parties in the front which included Marumalarchi DMK and Janata Party is yet to be worked out. 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and one in Pondicherry are up for grabs.

The prospects of electoral ties between the Congress and the AIADMK(J) had brightened following the 45-minute meeting between Reddy and Jayalalitha at the latter's Poes Garden residence in the city, a Congress source said.

The sources said an ``honourable alliance on the basis of mutual give and take'' was being worked out, and an announcement in this regard was likely to be made after a CWC meeting in Delhi on Friday.

However, the TNCC was totally kept in the dark and the State president K.V.Thangabalu was away in New Delhi when Reddy met Jayalalitha. A senior TNCC office-bearer expressed ignorance about the meeting, let alone details of the talks.

The Congress is in dire straits in Tamil Nadu after having failed to win a single Lok Sabha seat in the 1996 elections, and with most of the partymen having joined Moopanar's TMC.

Reddy's visit comes barely 24 hours after Jayalalitha's statement on Wednesday that her party would consider an alliance with the Congress if the latter made a formal approach.

It now remains to be seen whether the CWC would accept the MDMK in the group, as its general secretary V.Gopalsamy is known to be ``sympathetic to the cause of the LTTE'', particularly in the context of the Congress withdrawing its support to the Inder Kumar Gujral led UF government on the issue of Jain Commission report on , the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the indictment of the DMK for its links with the LTTE.

Reddy, who air-dashed to Chennai from Hyderabad met Jayalalitha late in the afternoon and in the evening left for New Delhi apparently to brief the AICC on the outcome of the talks.

The relations between the Congress and the AIADMK slumped after the last year's general elections when they lost all the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK declined to support Congress candidate V Narayanaswamy in the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha from the Union Territory of Pondicherry two months ago. In fact, the two AIADMK MLAs abstained from voting in the elections.

Though Vijaybhaskar Reddy described the visit as a `courtesy call', he hinted that political ties were discussed. Asked whether the meeting had firmed up the alliance, he said when politicians met, such things were normally discussed.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.