The DMK has made it known through a statement after its general body meeting in Chennai that the NDA agenda was the only programme of the coaltion and that the BJP should not allow saffron politics to take over and intrude. The party has said that it had watched the Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s comments on the issue and the leader had said that government would not work outside the ambit of coalition programmes.

In fact, the DMK leader M. Karunanidhi has categorically said that his party would take a hard and closer look at the nature of the alliance with the BJP if the Hindu agenda is pushed forward. In its turn, the BJP has also hinted that the allies could leave the coaltion if they wanted to but that the party would pursue its agenda to its logical end.

Karunanidhi has said that it was the Prime Minister’s duty to keep the coalition together and that he should keep the hardliners within the BJP in check. The DMK leader has said that under no circumstances would his party accept the BJP line of building the temple at Ayodhya as a principal cornerstone of its agenda.

The BJP has meanwhile taken a devious way out of the problem by allowing its members to raise private member’s bills on Fridays in which such contentious issues are being introduced by the backdoor. In fact, the BJP demand for a uniform civil code found its way into the Lok Sabha on last Friday when a private member sought to raise the issue while the party looked the other way. In fact, BJP spokesman J.P. Mathur said that while the party had no role to play in these Bills, any individual was free to raise any issue he or she liked and that the party could not issue diktats on these.