Congress revives power sharing demand in Tamil Nadu, leader compares state with UP

Though no senior leader or lawmaker has backed the suggestion to break away from the DMK, such voices are growing louder, especially among second-rung leaders.

Chennai: Amid public statements by state-level functionaries that the party should ally with actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) for the 2026 polls, the Congress in Tamil Nadu has revived the decades-old power-sharing demand as part of its pre-poll arrangement with the ruling DMK.

Though no senior leader or lawmaker has backed the suggestion to break away from the DMK and join the alliance led by TVK, such voices are growing louder, especially among the second-rung and district-level leaders. 

Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) chief K Selvaperunthagai recently endorsed the views of AICC in-charge for Tamil Nadu, Girish Chodankar, that power sharing was essential to strengthen the Congress in the state – the party has been piggy bagging on one of the Dravidian parties since it was thrown out of power in 1967. 

However, neither Chodankar nor Selvaperunthagai elaborated how they plan to place the demand before DMK, which did not share power with the Congress when the M Karunanidhi government solely relied on the party’s 34 MLAs to be in power from 2006 to 2011.

DMK leaders told DH that the party has always been against sharing power in the state and that there was no change in its position. 

Both demands – to ally with Vijay and power-sharing demand with the DMK – are seen by many as tactics to demand more seats from the DMK in the assembly elections. A majority of leaders want the Congress to get more seats than the 25 constituencies it contested in 2021 but they do not want to leave the “winning alliance”, while those batting for breaking the ties with the DMK and joining Vijay are also growing. 

The divisions within the state Congress have now gone beyond alliance talks with All India Professional Congress chief Praveen Chakravarthy, who is believed to have met Vijay and is an active proponent of an alliance with TVK, claiming that Tamil Nadu's outstanding debt is now higher than Uttar Pradesh and calling the situation "alarming". 

Not just Chakravarthy faced a backlash from the DMK but also from his own colleagues like S Jothimani and Sasikanth Senthil, both Lok Sabha MPs, who criticised him for comparing Tamil Nadu with Uttar Pradesh, arguing that the former’s debts are justified due to the huge welfare measures. 

Selvaperunthagai was blunt in saying that Chakravarthy was hell bent on creating a rift between the DMK and Congress. “The High Command should take a call on Praveen Chakravarthy since he has become a liability for the party in TN. His comments are much more than an irritant and have the potential to hurt DMK-Congress ties,” a senior leader told DH.

Another leader said while Congress can ask for more seats at the negotiating table with the DMK, but the demand should not be made in public domain keeping in mind the ties between the two parties. He also said that the statements by leaders that the Congress should ally with TVK should be discouraged as the ties are about 20 years old. 

“The first question is does Sonia Gandhi endorse the calls for breaking away from the DMK? Why are such comments being tolerated? And another question that one should ask is whether we are really ready to join hands with Vijay? Are we ready to criticise the DMK like Vijay does?” the leader asked.