Party president G K Moopanar, it appears, is left with difficult choices. One is related to appointing a new set of office-bearers in the place of those who resigned en masse on March 21. Party sources say the new list will not be drastically different from the old one.

The reason attributed is that given the equations that determine the political stances among the TMC, its ally, the DMK, their prime adversary in the state, the AIADMK, and the BJP which was catapulted last month to the throne in New Delhi, the TMC cannot afford basic structural changes in the organisation at this juncture. Many familiar faces will reappear when the top-level organisational frame isreconstituted, sources assert confidently.

A major issue that dominated the interactive proceedings that started last Friday was regarding the alliance the TMC has had with the ruling DMK since the 1996 general elections. The party is still deeply divided on this crucial matter. The cadres were of the view that the TMC should end the alliance with the DMK and emerge as an Opposition vying for political space with the AIADMK, the leading Opposition party in the state.

The lower-level leaders in the districts were confident that the TMC has a bright chance of coming to power in the state if only it cared to step out of the strait-jacket of the TMC-DMK combine and formed a third front by roping in the TNCC(I), which in fact has given a call for merger, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and Puthiya Tamizhagam, the Dalit outfit of Dr K Krishnasamy.

A `Young Turk' of the TMC from Pollachi did not rule out a closer relationship in the near future with the MDMK, which, in his opinion, is keeping itsoptions open as ``the MDMK, a Dravidian party to the core, is uncomfortable in the company of the AIADMK'' whose five-year rule since 1991 was associated with serious corruption charges, and of the BJP, ``known for its upper caste support base in the North.'' Opposed to the idea of a third front is a section of the TMC leadership which has its own doubts about the organisational capacity and capability of the party to take on both the DMK and the AIADMK in the state where the Congress has been out of power since 1967. This line of thinking is built around the simple theme: discretion is to be preferred when valour is not supported by strength.

A development that has unsettled the TMC's calculations in recent weeks is the increasingly strident demand by the AIADMK and some Union Ministers, including TRC leader V K Ramamurthy and BJP leader Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, for dismissing the DMK Government under Article 356 of the Constitution. Immediately after Lok Sabha election results in the first week ofMarch, some TMC leaders felt that the 18-month interregnum between the 1996 elections and the dissolution of the 11th Lok Sabha in 1997 was too short a period for the TMC to review its relationship with the DMK.

If the logic of this argument is extended to the Damocles sword hanging over the DMK Government in the name of invoking Article 356, it would be the most inopportune moment for the TMC to sever its relationship with the DMK, sources assert. Sandwiched between the ruling DMK and the AIADMK, the powerful Opposition in the state, which is aligned with the BJP, the ruling party at the Centre, the TMC has a highly restricted area of choices.