Rahul Gandhi led an INDIA bloc march from Parliament toward the Election Commission demanding the SIR be scrapped and the CEC sacked. The DMK accused him of fearing Chief Minister Vijay. Within 24 hours, another DMK spokesperson defended the protest and said citizens have a right to fight government wrongdoing.
BY PC Bureau
October 7: Leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi has received unexpected backing from the DMK a day after the same party attacked him over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The reversal is the latest twist in a bitter split that followed the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls.
On October 6, Rahul Gandhi led an INDIA bloc march from Parliament toward the Election Commission office, demanding that the SIR exercise be scrapped and that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar be removed. Police stopped the march near Akashvani Bhavan. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and leaders from parties such as the Samajwadi Party and Shiv Sena (UBT) joined the protest. The DMK and the AAP stayed away.
That same day, DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai posted on X:
“What’s the stand of @RahulGandhi with regard to the deletions through SIR in TN. Why is he not endorsing Kharge ji’s statement that all State Governments elected after SIR should be dissolved? Is he afraid of @actorvijay to speak about SIR in Tamilnadu. What a duplicitous man? Once a skunk, always a skunk.”
The DMK’s complaint was specific. It alleged large-scale deletions in Tamil Nadu during the SIR conducted ahead of the April 2026 polls — reports put the draft-roll removals at about 97.3 lakh names — and said Gandhi was campaigning against the Election Commission nationally while staying quiet on the state. Annadurai linked that silence to Congress’s alliance with actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which formed the government with Congress support after the polls. The DMK also pressed Gandhi to back a reported remark by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge that governments elected after SIR should be dissolved.
Wednesday’s reversal
A day later, DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan took the opposite line. He said elections could not be fair if Gyanesh Kumar, in a high post, was anti-democratic, and that the CEC should be removed. He added that citizens have a right to protest government wrongdoing, that this is what Rahul Gandhi did, and that the government does not want Gandhi to protest against Gyanesh Kumar.
Elangovan had backed the INDIA block protest on Tuesday also, Ina post on X he had said, “When they want to protest and take out a procession to Parliament, they should be allowed to do so. But the BJP government stopped them from going to Parliament. It is the fundamental right of an individual to protest. But they put up barricades to prevent them from going towards Parliament, so Rahul Gandhi had to climb over them.”
Chennai, Tamil Nadu: On the Opposition’s protest over the SIR controversy, DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan says, “When they want to protest and take out a procession to Parliament, they should be allowed to do so. But the BJP government stopped them from going to Parliament. It is the fundamental right of an individual to protest. But they put up barricades to prevent them from going towards Parliament, so Rahul Gandhi had to climb over them.”
— IANS (@ians_india) October 6, 2026
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The shift is sharp, but not entirely new in substance. In late September, after the DMK skipped an INDIA bloc strategy meeting, Elangovan had already said the party was no longer in the bloc yet would support a parliamentary motion to remove Gyanesh Kumar, citing a statement by the DMK leadership. Tuesday’s personal attack on Gandhi cut against that earlier assurance; Wednesday’s comments restored the line on the CEC while dropping the swipe.
Why the churn matters
The decades-old DMK–Congress alliance collapsed after the 2026 Tamil Nadu results. Congress ended the tie-up and backed TVK; the DMK then left the INDIA bloc and is now the main opposition in the state. It did not attend last week’s INDIA meeting on a nationwide protest against the CEC, even while saying it agreed on the issue.
Neither Gandhi nor the Congress has replied to Annadurai’s post or to Elangovan’s later support. The episode leaves the DMK attacking Congress over Tamil Nadu’s rolls and Vijay one day, then endorsing the same Delhi protest against Gyanesh Kumar the next — political churn driven as much by the broken alliance as by the SIR dispute itself.
