SATHYAMOORTHY BHAVAN, the headquarters of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee in Chennai, is bustling with activity. Party workers stream in and out, waiting to get hold of their faction leaders and curry favours ahead of the upcoming assembly elections. Inside, the party president’s cabin hums with chatter. A few senior leaders are seated in a circle. Anyone eavesdropping will expect the discussion to be about seat allocation and seat sharing with ally DMK, but it is, in fact, about something equally political, especially in a state like Tamil Nadu—cinema.
The movie in question—the recently released Parasakthi. “How is the movie?” asks one leader. “Is there anything deliberately portrayed against Indira Gandhi? Why should they talk about anti-Hindi agitation now?” Another leader chimes in, “None of us has watched the movie. But anti-Hindi fervour is the mood in Tamil Nadu now. Even we might need to adopt the same tone as the Dravidian parties. Otherwise, we might lose. For now, we should not make it an issue.”
In Tamil Nadu, the lines separating cinema and politics often blur, even merge. A few days ago, Praveen Chakravarty, an aide of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and chairperson of the All India Professionals’ Congress, met actor-politician Vijay at the latter’s Panaiyur residence. That led to speculation that the Congress was exploring an alternative electoral arrangement. State Congress president K. Selvaperunthagai denies it, saying, “I have already clarified on this. Our party’s Tamil Nadu in-charge Girish Chodankar has also clarified saying that someone meeting some person in the state cannot change political equations.”
The Congress-DMK alliance dates back to the 1960s. Till the 1967 Lok Sabha elections, the two parties were rivals. It was the 1969 split in the Congress—the Indira Gandhi-led Congress (Requisition) and Congress (Organisation), led by K. Kamaraj—that led to them joining hands. In December 1970, Indira, running a minority government then, dissolved the Lok Sabha and called for early elections—a decision that put an end to the ‘one nation, one election’ cycle and changed political equations in Tamil Nadu. Then chief minister M. Karunanidhi, sensing a drubbing by the Congress (O) and C. Rajagopalachari’s Swatantra Party, dissolved the assembly and allied with the Congress (R). But there was a rider: the Congress (R) would get 10 seats for the Lok Sabha elections, none for the assembly. The Lok Sabha seats helped Indira win, but the decision to forgo the assembly seats marked the beginning of the party’s decline in the state. From being a party in power with more than 40 per cent vote share in the 1960s to playing a decisive role in the 1990s, the Congress has now been reduced to a junior partner in AIADMK- or DMK-run governments.
One reason for its decline has been its disenchanted and depleted cadre. It doesn’t have grassroot workers who can mobilise and win even one seat. But Sivaganga MP Karti Chidambaram will have you believe otherwise. “The party infrastructure is alive in Sivaganga and Kanniyakumari,” he says. “There is natural support for the Congress in many parts of the state.”
State party chief Selvaperunthagai, on the other hand, claims the party’s village committees have become stronger ever since he took charge 23 months ago. “Each village has more than 1,000 Congress workers and office-bearers,” he says. “We had leaders like P. Chidambaram interacting with village committees and appointing office-bearers. This model is helping us regain our strength at the grassroots.”
The party’s past weighs heavily on its present slump. Its reluctance to field a chief ministerial candidate after 1967, in a state that has cult personalities leading regional parties, is a case in point. The only exception was in 1989 when G.K. Moopanar was the face of its campaign; the DMK won that election. After the DMK government was dismissed by the Chandra Shekhar government at the Centre in 1991, the Congress joined hands with the J. Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumbudur in May 1991 got the Congress and the alliance sympathy votes. “The sympathy wave benefited Jayalalithaa,” says a two-time MP from the Congress. “But we did not choose to rule the state or get into any power-sharing arrangement.”
Also, the state Congress has always been a divided house, having too many ambitious leaders but none strong enough to pull in votes. It, therefore, has seen multiple splits—Moopanar’s Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) in 1996 and P. Chidambaram’s Congress Jananayaka Peravai (CJP) in 2001. By the 2006 assembly polls though, all the factions had returned to the Congress fold. Still, the party did not get into any power-sharing arrangement with the DMK then.
Virudhunagar MP Manickam Tagore says that the Congress should be a part of the government so as to deliver policies and reach a larger audience. “We had an opportunity in 2006,” he says. “Without our support, the DMK could not have formed the government. In 2009, at least when the Pattali Makkal Katchi and left parties walked out of the alliance, we should have been part of the government. There is an opportunity even now.”
Cuddalore MP M.K. Vishnu Prasad insists that only by participating in the local administration can the party stay alive. “This is the lifeline of any party,” he says. “The feel of power should percolate to the grassroot level. Local body representation is key.”
Thiruvallur MP Sasikanth Senthil has a slightly different view. He says the way to revive the party is not just through sharing power, but by reaching out to people in their language and through its own politics. “The revival has to happen by identifying our own politics,” he says. “The Congress has positioned itself on unity in diversity and secularism. Executing that alone can bring us victory.” Also, unlike other parties, including Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, the Congress hasn’t taken to the streets to raise local concerns. “We are not connected to the people here,” adds Senthil. “For issues like the rural employment scheme, people expect us to be with them on the ground.”
This has had an impact on its vote share—in 1989, the Congress’s vote share was 19.83 per cent; in 2021, it had come down to 4.27 per cent. The DMK’s vote share, meanwhile, was 33.18 per cent in 1989 and 37.7 per cent in 2021. Tagore, however, argues that the Congress contributes to every seventh vote secured by the alliance.
But there is no denying that ties between the allies are not as smooth as it was until 2024—ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, DMK chief M.K. Stalin was the only leader to refer to Rahul as the prime ministerial candidate and insist that an INDIA bloc without the Congress would not be successful. Talks about the Congress quitting the alliance with the DMK have been gaining ground in the past few weeks. Chakravarty’s visit to Vijay and his subsequent post on X comparing the debt rates of Tamil Nadu with Uttar Pradesh’s has irked the DMK. Even Congress MPs and state leaders have criticised Chakravarty’s post. “These are actions driven by the need for personal mileage of a few Congress leaders,” says a senior Congress leader.
But then a few Congress leaders took part in a Christmas celebration along with TVK leaders in Kanniyakumari, which led to further rumbling in the alliance. “My name was printed on the invitation without my consent. I didn’t take part in the event,” says Kanniyakumari MP Vijay Vasanth. “The alliance equations cannot be decided by taking part in an event.”
Even before the X post and the party though, it was Rahul’s call to Vijay following the Karur stampede that first started the murmurs. “That was only a courtesy call,” explains Selvaperunthagai. “Our leader called every other chief minister or political leader when there was an untoward incident in their state. He called Vijay only after informing the chief minister.”
Party insiders say that the tilt of a section of Congress leaders towards the TVK is because they think that Vijay’s fanbase in Kerala may help the party defeat the CPI(M) and regain power.
Then there was the post from Karur MP Jothimani Sennimalai, warning that “unchecked internal conflicts within the Tamil Nadu Congress were causing deep disappointment”. She accused a section of the party of focusing on electoral arithmetic rather than ideology or people’s issues. Her differences with former minister and DMK’s Karur strongman V. Senthil Balaji is said to be a reason for her animosity with the DMK. But on record, all she says is that the five-member committee formed by the party high command has initiated talks with Chief Minister Stalin. “Our party leaders will talk and decide on seat-sharing and alliance,” she says.
Snapping ties with the DMK will come at a cost though. The Congress’s drain in resources has made it solely depend on its Dravidian ally in the state. Also, the opposition’s heft in Parliament will come down significantly without the support of the DMK, which has more than 30 MPs in the two houses. “How do you think we can come out of the alliance now? When we came out of the alliance in 2014, there were at least issues that caused a strain in the alliance,” says a senior leader. “But now not even one MLA has spoken against the DMK or its policies in the assembly. If the alliance breaks, it will be because of seat-sharing.”
While most DMK ministers and MPs view the Congress as a baggage in the alliance, the party leadership has not expressed any opinion. The DMK leadership is aware that there is a substantial number of Congress voters in the state.
Alagiriswamy J., assistant professor of economics, Loyola College, however, says that if the Congress quits the alliance, it will only backfire. “The Congress failed to inject fresh blood into the party,” he says. “In the given scenario, the party’s position has also changed, with just a niche share in votes. They are trying to go through an acid test here in Tamil Nadu. But there are no signs that they will win a significant vote share.”