Chennai, Dec. 26: The BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit today opened its doors for talks with the Jayalalithaa-led ADMK less than a week after the DMK quit the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.

DMK chief M. Karunanidhi said his party would shape a new progressive front for the coming Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP, however, still has the support of two other Dravidian parties — the PMK and the MDMK. State BJP president C.P. Radhakrishnan welcomed the PMK’s decision last evening to remain in the NDA and added that his party was “way ahead of others” in preparations for the Lok Sabha polls. He did not rule out the possibility of renewing ties with Jayalalithaa.

Karunanidhi, on the other hand, has been cool to Pranab Mukherjee’s hint of a possible Congress alliance with his party. The Congress leader said his party considered the DMK a credible and dependable ally. But Karunanidhi evaded a direct reply to this.

The DMK leader said the party had already started preparing for the Lok Sabha polls. Asked if the new combination of social forces would be a secular front, he replied: “It will be a progressive front.”

Karunanidhi said the party would be ready for early polls as hinted by the Prime Minister. “If the elections are announced early, then we would even announce our manifesto and the first list of candidates in the DMK’s southern zonal conference at Virudhunagar in March.”

Karunanidhi said the PMK had not faced any problems in the NDA and hence its decision to stay in the alliance.

“We were the affected party. The PMK faced no such predicament. The attitude and the rabid speeches of the Tamil Nadu BJP leaders targeting us violated the spirit of the coalition pact in New Delhi and thus our differences widened.”

Though the anti-terror law was central to widening the gap between the DMK and the NDA, Karunanidhi maintained that the PMK and the MDMK were never pressured to toe his line. The MDMK has been directly affected by the law as party chief Vaiko is in jail facing charges under the anti-terror law. “We are not insisting that the MDMK should come out because of that,” explained the DMK chief. Each party is free to take its own decisions.

The DMK chief first avoided making a direct comment on J.M. Lyngdoh’s latest barb at politicians. The chief election commissioner had compared politicians to “a cancer with no cure as yet”. But Karunanidhi dismissed it lightly saying there were many more hospitals treating cancer in the country today. “I do not take his remarks very seriously,” he said.

“He (Lyngdoh) should have first thought about it,” he said when asked if it was proper for a person holding a high constitutional office to publicly comment on the political class.