DMK quits UPA

• Submits letter to President withdrawing support
• 5 ministers to resign today

Anita Saluja New Delhi: After the Trinamool Congress last year, it was the turn of the DMK on Tuesday to announce pullout from the UPA government, plunging it into a full-blown political crisis. DMK leader T R Baalu flew from Chennai late on Tuesday night to hand-over the letter of withdrawal of support to the President. The Union Ministers belonging to the DMK are expected to hand in their resignations on Wednesday morning. Earlier in the day, DMK supremo M Karunanidhi declared in Chennai that he was pulling the rug from under the UPA government on the issue of alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka. He, however, had left a window open for returning to the government, if a resolution was adopted in parliament before March 21, which would have categorically condemned the Rajapaksa government for the "genocide" and war crimes against Tamils in Sri Lanka. It had also asked for a credible international commission to investigate the war crimes against the Sri Lankan Tamils. The UPA political managers, P Chidambaram and Kamal Nath, were busy throughout the day holding talks with the DMK leadership, trying to persuade them not to insist on the word "genocide" in the UNHCR Resolution. Sources stated that the UPA government had even prepared a draft, which was shown to the DMK leadership but the latter refused to budge from its stand. What irked the DMK was the mild resolution brought by the US, which merely called upon Sri Lanka to conduct "an independent and credible investigation" and did not mandate an international probe into alleged war crimes and human rights violations during Sri Lanka's lengthy civil war with Tamil rebels.