DMK not in a hurry to fill up Cabinet posts: Karunanidhi

Ahead of a minor expansion of the Union council of ministers on Sunday, key UPA ally DMK Friday said it was not in a hurry to fill up its two Cabinet slots.

"We have not decided. We don't want to hurry up," DMK chief M Karunanidhi told reporters when asked about the party filling the berths.

DMK with 18 members in the Lok Sabha has refrained from naming its choices for the two Cabinet berths from its quota, which fell vacant following the resignations of A Raja and Dayanidhi Maran, leaving Karunanidhi's son MK Alagiri as the party's sole representative in the cabinet.

Asked to comment on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's optimism that the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, over which a standoff between the protesters and the government persists, would be operationalised in a couple of weeks, the DMK leader gave a guarded reaction.

"I hope everyone's opinion would have been taken into consideration. If they had done so then I welcome it," he said.

On the attacks on Tamils over the Mullaiperiyar dam row with Kerala, he said his party favoured an all-party meeting to elicit the views of political parties on the vexed issue.

"I had already said that an all-party meet should be convened, but instead an assembly resolution was passed. If they (state government) had called for an all-party meet, parties could have expressed their opinion," he said.

The Tamil Nadu assembly had passed a resolution yesterday, asserting that the state would under no circumstances give up its rights on the dam.