DMK chief M.K. Stalin joined Rahul’s Voter Adhikar Yatra, signaling southern support for the Congress-led campaign.
BY PC Bureau
August 27, 2025: As DMK chief M.K. Stalin joined Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar, Rahul launched a sharp attack on the BJP, branding the Gujarat Model as a “Vote-Chori scheme” and accusing the Election Commission of enabling electoral fraud.
The Opposition INDIA bloc’s campaign in Bihar gathered momentum as TN Chief Minister , accompanied by MP Kanimozhi, joined Rahul Gandhi and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav in the ongoing Yatra in Muzaffarpur.
The yatra, which began on August 17 in Sasaram and will conclude in Patna on September 1, is aimed at highlighting alleged irregularities in Bihar’s electoral rolls, with opposition parties claiming that the deletion of over 65 lakh names amounts to large-scale voter suppression.
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Stalin’s presence at the Muzaffarpur leg of the march underlined the opposition’s strategy of projecting broad unity against what they describe as the BJP’s “vote theft.” Speaking in Tamil—translated into Hindi for the crowd—Stalin accused the BJP of reducing the Election Commission of India (ECI) to a “remote-controlled puppet.” He invoked Bihar’s role in past democratic struggles, citing Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement, and praised the alliance of Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav as a “brotherhood to protect democracy.”
“Wherever they go, there is a sea of people. This friendship will get you victory in Bihar,” Stalin told the rally. On social media, he declared Bihar “the land with fire in its eyes, its soil heavy with every stolen vote,” vowing to return for the INDIA bloc’s swearing-in after the elections. He also recalled the close ties between the DMK and RJD, crediting Tejashwi Yadav with carrying forward Lalu Prasad Yadav’s legacy of social justice.
BJP का गुजरात मॉडल कोई विकास का नहीं, वोट चोरी का मॉडल है। https://t.co/IM4yFRHxgz pic.twitter.com/IrBHB5dJUA
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 27, 2025
Rahul Gandhi, meanwhile, used the platform to sharply escalate his attack on the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, branding the so-called “Gujarat Model” not as an economic template but as a “model of vote-chori” (vote theft). Gandhi alleged that practices of deleting legitimate voters and adding fictitious ones were first perfected in Gujarat before 2014 and then expanded nationwide.
“It was happening in Gujarat before 2014. They brought it to the national level in 2014. Gujarat model is not an economic model, it is a model of stealing votes,” Gandhi said. He cited alleged voter roll manipulations in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat assembly polls, as well as in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, claiming that the ECI had added nearly one crore votes in Maharashtra alone to help the BJP.
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Gandhi further accused the BJP of shielding the Election Commissioner with a 2023 law that, he argued, ensures impunity for electoral fraud. “Votes matter for the poor because without votes, you have no rights. If voting rights are lost, the Constitution itself cannot be protected,” he told the gathering, stressing that Dalits, OBCs, and marginalized groups stand to lose the most from such manipulations.
Welcome to Bihar and the #VoterAdhikarYatra my brother Thiru @mkstalin
Your presence here strengthens our fight against Vote Chori in Bihar and the entire country. pic.twitter.com/lNQWGz1G1n
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 27, 2025
The Muzaffarpur rally, attended by Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, CPI(ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya, and state Congress chief Rajesh Ram, drew massive crowds. Stalin’s participation, alongside Rahul Gandhi’s Gujarat Model critique, reframed the Voter Adhikar Yatra not just as a protest against Bihar’s voter roll revision but as a larger battle over the integrity of Indian democracy.
The BJP, meanwhile, attacked Stalin’s presence, with Tamil Nadu BJP chief K. Annamalai accusing the DMK of hypocrisy and highlighting past “derogatory remarks” allegedly made by DMK leaders against North Indians. Despite the criticism, INDIA bloc leaders continued to emphasize unity, projecting the yatra as both a protest and a show of strength before the Bihar assembly polls.
As the yatra moves toward its finale in Patna, its success in sustaining momentum will be seen as a test of the opposition’s ability to counter the BJP’s formidable electoral machinery and shift Bihar’s political discourse from caste equations to questions of democratic rights.
