Chennai, Feb. 16: The CPM has signalled its Tamil Nadu ally, the Congress, to lay off Nagercoil by declaring its candidates for the two Lok Sabha seats allotted to it by the DMK-led front.

The CPM became the first party in the Democratic Progressive Alliance to announce nominees by fielding trade union leader A.V. Bellarmine from Nagercoil and renominating incumbent MP P. Mohan from Madurai.

The Congress, which is the principal partner of the DMK in the alliance, has been demanding Nagercoil as it has been a party bastion for decades. Former Congress chief late K. Kamaraj was twice elected from the constituency.

The party’s Kanyakumari district unit has been desperate to wrest back the seat it lost to the BJP the last time, following a split in votes after the formation of the Tamil Maanila Congress.

The district workers have been up in arms against the DMK’s allotment of Nagercoil to the Marxists. They met their chief, Sonia Gandhi, on Friday to air their grievance before she could call on her DMK counterpart M. Karunanidhi. Some even waved a banner saying “Nagercoil for Congress” while Sonia was addressing them.

Yesterday, they went to the extent of issuing a statement in Nagercoil that they had decided to field an “Independent candidate” against the CPM. P. Vijayaraghavan, the son of late party strongman Ponnappa Nadar, was named the nominee “of their own choice”.

But Sonia, after the meeting with Karunanidhi, said the “Nagercoil issue” was a “minor” one. The party, she said, was more serious about getting Pondicherry, another Congress bastion gifted by Karunanidhi to another ally, the PMK.

Now that the CPM has announced its candidates for both seats allotted by the alliance, the Congress is under pressure to cap its internal bickering over Nagercoil that borders Kerala in the country’s southernmost tip.

CPM state secretary . Varadarajan, who made the announcement in front of politburo member Prakash Karat, expressed the hope that the tempers running high within the Congress would die down. The CPM, he claimed, was also trying to pacify local Congress workers.

The CPI, too, finalised its candidates for the two seats in the state allotted to it by the DMK-led alliance. The party’s vocal legislator, K. Subbaroyan, has been fielded from Coimbatore and former MLA Appadurai from the Tenkasi reserved seat.