CHENNAI: Congress on Wednesday formally severed its decade-long alliance with the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance and extended its full support to Vijay’s TVK to form the government in the state.
AICC Tamil Nadu in-charge Girish Chodankar, in a statement, said the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) and the Congress Legislature Party have decided to extend their full support to TVK for forming the government after Vijay wrote to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge formally requesting the party’s backing.
The support, however, comes with a non-negotiable condition. “Our support shall be conditional upon the TVK keeping out from this alliance any communal forces that do not believe in the Constitution of India,” Chodankar said in the statement.With Congress’s five MLAs behind Vijay, TVK’s tally in the 234-member House would rise to 112 (not including one seat of Vijay’s that he would vacate).
The DMK, which had been Congress’s alliance partner through multiple elections since 2017 RK Nagar by-polls, reacted with undisguised anger. DMK treasurer TR Baalu, in a statement on Wednesday, called the move of the grand old party a betrayal. “The statement issued on behalf of the AICC has revealed its true nature which had been hidden for some time. Whenever the Congress party faced a difficult situation or crisis, the DMK stood by it as a close ally. For that, we paid a heavy price. But we accepted it with an open heart,” Baalu said. He pointed out at the DMK’s personal ties with the Congress leadership, including ex-PM Manmohan Singh, ex-Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi.
“We demonstrated a deep friendship with Mother Sonia Gandhi and the late former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and a brotherly bond on a personal level with Rahul Gandhi. He too would say, ‘Stalin is the only political leader I call brother’. When I saw in the news that the Congress is now saying those ties have been severed, it didn’t come as a shock for some reason,” Baalu said.
Taking a dig at Congress’s justification of the move on “secular and constitutional grounds”, Baalu said, “Having secured the majority of seats in the SPA contesting the election, and winning through the hard work of alliance party workers, they have shamelessly defected five MLAs to the opposition camp. It’s as if they’ve made some grand political diplomatic decision, and the Congress party is trying to justify it by painting it with a principle. The attempt to mask opportunism with a policy facade is laughable. It is a blatant betrayal of the people who voted believing that a DMK-led government would be formed,” he said.
“Defeat is nothing new to us. Betrayal is nothing new to us either. But we also know that these are not permanent. Time will give the answer,” Baalu said.