DMK, Congress trade barbs over the latter’s post-poll alliance with the TVK

The DMK and its former ally, the Congress, on Saturday indulged in a war of words over the electoral defeat and the latter switching sides after the elections.

Speaking at the DMK youth wing meeting held in Chennai on Saturday, Leader of the Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin said the Congress was responsible for the BJP’s continuous victories in the country and alleged that the DMK had carried such a party on its shoulders in the Lok Sabha and recent Assembly elections. “I used to think that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah should be credited for the BJP’s continuous victories. Now I realise that the Congress is responsible for them,” he said while addressing the youth wing meeting of the party.

Mr. Udhayanidhi said the DMK, committed to secularism and preventing the BJP from entering Tamil Nadu, had shed “blood and tears” to ensure the victory of Congress candidates. “We did the same in the Assembly elections. The Congress, which was missing in the field during the election campaign, won five seats because of DMK cadre. They won because of the votes polled in favour of electing the DMK president as Chief Minister. But they ran after power,” he alleged.

The Congress, he said, had “lacked minimum decency and gratitude” and should not be trusted or included in any future alliance. Mr. Udhayanidhi said while leaders of some alliance partners had discussions with DMK president M.K. Stalin before extending support to the ruling party, the Congress, after “piggybacking on our shoulders for 20 years”, had backstabbed the DMK.

A resolution adopted at the meeting said that such conduct was nothing new for the Congress, accusing it of surviving as a “parasite” and resorting to betrayal and condemned the national party. DMK president M.K. Stalin was also present.

Congress Legislature Party leader S. Rajesh Kumar reacted strongly, saying that the charge only showed that the DMK had not learnt its lesson from its electoral defeat. In a statement issued here, Mr. Rajesh Kumar, who has joined the Ministry headed by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, said the ‘Whistle’ symbol of the TVK helped it win the election.

The DMK alleged that the Congress won five seats in the Assembly election, and even before the election, had secured a Rajya Sabha seat with the DMK’s assistance. “But without any sense of gratitude, it switched camps overnight. The craving for power has blunted the brain of the oldest political movement, which could not follow minimum decency,” the resolution adopted at the meeting read.

The youth wing said such conduct was nothing new for the Congress, accusing it of surviving as a “parasite” and resorting to betrayal. “Congress wise men always make a hole in the boat they sail in. If they become part of the government, it is because of the votes polled in favour of a DMK government. They have created history without realising that it was not their own victory. We condemn the Congress, which cannot win an election on its own and resorts to unethical acts of betrayal,” the resolution said.

Mr. Rajesh Kumar countered the allegation, saying that at his first meeting in Vikravandi, Mr. Vijay had declared that he would share power with alliance partners. “The people of the State accepted it and elected his party to power. Alliance partners who felt stifled in the DMK alliance accepted Mr. Vijay’s broad democratic principles and joined the Ministry. It is a political transformation unseen in Tamil Nadu in the last 60 years,” he said.

Further, he argued that if the DMK had been confident of winning, it could have avoided forming alliances . “But no one can deny the efforts taken by the DMK president to stitch together an alliance despite many uncertainties,” he said, and pointed out that both the DMK and the AIADMK had been unable to win elections on their own since 1967. “The DMK should wholeheartedly accept the people’s verdict and refrain from criticising its allies in a denigrating manner,” he said.

He added that the alliance had been formed for mutual benefit and that the DMK had also received Congress votes in constituencies where it won.