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Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy meets Jaya

Senior Congress leader Kotla Vijayabhaskar Reddy met All Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham supremo Jayalalitha at her home in Madras this afternoon.

It was the first formal contact between leaders of the two parties after nearly a year in an effort to arrive at seat adjustment for the general election.

Reddy, according to sources, was deputed by party president Sitaram Kesri to explore the possibility of a seat adjustment with the AIADMK.

Reddy is expected in the capital tonight and brief the Congress leadership about the outcome of his talks with the AIADMK leader.

Relations between the two parties virtually froze after last year's debacle, when the AIADMK-Congress alliance lost all the 39 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

The AIADMK declined to support Congress candidate V Narayanaswamy in the biennial election to the Rajya Sabha from the Union Territory of Pondicherry two months ago. In fact, the two AIADMK MLAs abstained from voting in the election.

AIADMK sources said they could not support the Congress candidate in Pondicherry as Kesri did not approach Jayalalitha in this regard.

The Congress was then toying with the idea of having a tie-up with the Tamil Maanila Congress, taking advantage of its strained relations with the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham on the Jain Commission interim report.

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