​No gain in bargaining: On the Congress-DMK alliance

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At a clip erstwhile the absorption to the BJP has go fragmented oregon weakened crossed India, the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) successful Tamil Nadu remains the astir robust multi-party anti-BJP alliance, mostly due to the fact that of its ideological cohesion successful a State with a chiseled socio-political ethos and the seamless quality of its constituent parties to transportation votes to allies. Yet, caller developments, wherever second-rung Congress leaders person either critiqued the DMK oregon demanded a nonstop stock successful power, person stretched the seams of the confederation dangerously to the brink of a fallout betwixt the parties. The statement betwixt the SPA’s partners has been wide for implicit a decennary — the DMK forms the authorities with their support, and the confederation benefits collectively successful presumption of practice astatine the Centre, State and section levels done ballot transfers. This statement helped the Congress reap a bully harvest of MPs from Tamil Nadu successful the 2024 wide election. So wherefore person MP Manickam Tagore and All India Professionals’ Congress president Praveen Chakravarty begun criticising the DMK, adjacent aft the precocious bid asked them not to aerial specified views publicly?

The telephone for a stock successful powerfulness could beryllium seen arsenic a bargaining ploy to contention much Assembly seats. But the Congress secured a acold amended onslaught complaint successful 2021 (18 of 25 seats) compared to 2016 (eight of 41), suggesting that this regulation was justifiable comparative to its enactment base. Power-sharing would beryllium viable lone if the SPA contested connected a jointly drafted communal minimum programme, oregon if the Congress had substantively accrued its enactment basal successful the State, necessitating accommodation. Unlike the VCK oregon the Left, which person held the DMK-led authorities to relationship connected issues of labour and caste favoritism contempt extracurricular support, the Congress’s critiques person been opportunistic and advertisement hoc, surfacing lone aft histrion Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) has emerged arsenic an oppositional force. If the Congress abandons the SPA for an confederation with the TVK, it would basal to suffer the most, sacrificing a important INDIA state that delivered the bloc its highest State tally successful 2024. A Congress exit from the SPA volition tighten the contention by narrowing the spread betwixt the DMK and the AIADMK (in confederation with the BJP), but galore accepted Congress voters, principally opposed to the BJP, are apt to gravitate toward the DMK-led confederation alternatively than a tie-up with an untested and enigmatic unit specified arsenic the TVK. It would beryllium a lawsuit of being pound-foolish and not adjacent penny-wise. The Congress enactment would bash amended focusing connected confederation cohesion, and moving towards resuscitating its moribund organisational structure, alternatively than rocking the vessel successful Tamil Nadu.

Published - February 18, 2026 12:20 americium IST

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