DMK Divided Over Rahul Gandhi's Campaign Against EC

Months after the Congress walked into the C Joseph Vijay-led TVK camp to form the government in Tamil Nadu, the DMK is blowing hot and cold on Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi over his campaign against the Election Commission (EC). While a section of the DMK has sharpened its attacks on Gandhi, a marked contrast that reflects the changed relationship between the two parties, another section has “defended” the LoP’s right to protest . DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai on Wednesday cited a media report on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to question why Gandhi, who has forcefully raised allegations of electoral manipulation elsewhere, had not spoken similarly about Tamil Nadu. “Daro Mat! (Don’t be scared),” Annadurai wrote, claiming that constituencies with large numbers of deletions disproportionately went to Vijay’s TVK. According to Annadurai, the TVK won 84 of the 135 constituencies where more than 20,000 voters were deleted and all 10 constituencies where deletions exceeded 80,000. He asked Gandhi whether he believed the SIR had affected Tamil Nadu and the DMK, and whether the EC had acted fairly. The figures and the claim about their electoral effect were cited by Annadurai from the media report – the inputs provided do not include an EC’s response to them. Even as Annadurai attacked Gandhi, senior DMK leader TKS Elangovan defended the Congress leader’s right to protest. “It is the right of citizens to fight against the government’s wrongdoings. That is what Rahul Gandhi did yesterday,” Elangovan said on Wednesday. He also demanded Kumar’s removal and fresh elections in states where, he alleged, the electoral process had been compromised. The apparent contradiction is partly explained by the political rearrangement since Tamil Nadu’s April election. The DMK subsequently left the Congress-led INDIA bloc. The TVK now governs with support from Congress and other smaller parties. That has given the dispute over electoral rolls another layer. The DMK and Congress may still attack the same institution over the SIR, but they now approach Tamil Nadu from opposite sides of the political field. The DMK leaders’ reactions came as Gandhi and other Opposition leaders intensified their confrontation with the EC in New Delhi. On Tuesday, Gandhi was detained at Akashvani Bhavan after police stopped Opposition MPs from marching to the poll body’s office. He subsequently staged a nine-hour sit-in . The Opposition has demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar following Express report last month that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions they said had been taken without their knowledge, including matters relating to the SIR. Annadurai had been even more personal a day earlier. While Gandhi was staging his Delhi protest, the DMK spokesperson asked whether he was reluctant to raise Tamil Nadu’s deletions because he was “afraid of Vijay”. He also called Gandhi “duplicitous” and used the phrase: “Once a skunk, always a skunk.” He further questioned why Gandhi had not endorsed what he described as Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s position that state governments elected after the SIR should be dissolved. For the DMK, the argument is therefore no longer simply whether electoral-roll revisions deserve scrutiny. It is why Gandhi’s campaign against the SIR, in the party’s telling, appears to stop when it reaches a state governed by his new ally.