May 22 (Bloomberg) -- India’s Manmohan Singh will be sworn in prime minister for his second five-year term today as the ruling party continues negotiations over cabinet berths for coalition partners.

Singh, who won the general elections that ended over the weekend, has yet to announce the names of ministers who will join him because his Congress party hasn’t reached an agreement with the other members of the United Progressive Alliance. While the Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam said it wasn’t agreeable to the formula proposed by the Congress party and won’t join the government, the Congress party said talks are still on.

Muthuvel Karunanidhi, head of the DMK, “has advised me to inform you that the DMK will support from outside,” party leader T.R. Baalu said in New Delhi last night after talks between the two sides ended without agreement.

The DMK, which has 18 seats in parliament, insisted on more berths than in the outgoing government, said the coalition leader. Talks were still going on with the DMK, he said.

The Congress “proposal was to maintain status quo as with some other parties,” party spokesman Janardan Dwivedi told reporters. “They wanted that they should get something more than that but it doesn’t mean that dialogue has stopped.”

The Congress party had the support of a total 322 members in the 545-seat lower house, or Lok Sabha, Singh told reporters May 19. This included 48 members of parties that had pledged to support the United Progressive Alliance coalition, he said. The Congress, on its own, won 206 seats.

Farooq Abdullah

Another coalition ally that made public its dissatisfaction with the process of government formation was the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference, which has three seats in the lower house, or Lok Sabha. The party’s Farooq Abdullah, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state, hasn’t been given any information about his ministerial prospects, his son said.

“He’s not going to wait around until noon on the day of the swearing in to see if he’s going to be a minister,” Omar Abdullah, current chief minister of the state, told the NDTV 24x7 television channel. “He’ll quite happily fly off to South Africa,” where the Indian Premier League cricket tournament is being played. The elder Abdullah is head of the state cricket association.

The Congress party yesterday sent Pranab Mukherjee, its chief interlocutor with allies in the last government, for talks with the DMK’s Karunanidhi after first dispatching other negotiators, including Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ahmed Patel.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bibhudatta Pradhan in New Delhi at bpradhan@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 21, 2009 23:20 EDT