Chennai: Signalling further deterioration in relations with its erstwhile ally, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of silence and double standards over the large-scale deletion of voter names in Tamil Nadu.
DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai took to X to question Rahul’s stance even as the opposition INDIA bloc protested in Delhi against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
On Tuesday, Annadurai asked why Rahul was not endorsing Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s view that the governments elected after the SIR process were illegal. The Congress leader was hesitant to speak out due to actor-politician Vijay and the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), he posted.
“What a duplicitous man? Once a skunk, always a skunk.”
The friction between the DMK and the Congress in Tamil Nadu has been increasing, particularly after the 2026 Assembly elections in which the DMK lost power. This was after the Congress ended its decades-long alliance with the DMK in May 2026 to support the DMK in May.
What’s the stand of @RahulGandhi with regard to the deletions through SIR in TN.
Why is he not endorsing Kharge jis statement that all State Governments elected after SIR should be dissolved?
Is he afraid of @actorvijay to speak about SIR in Tamilnadu.
What a duplicitous… https://t.co/fbjQOsZDuI
— Saravanan Annadurai (@saravofcl) October 6, 2026
Conducted ahead of the 2026 state polls, the SIR process resulted in the removal of approximately 97.3 lakh names from the draft electoral rolls. The state’s electorate dropped from about 6.41 crore to 5.43 crore. Official data attributed the deletions primarily to 66.4 lakh voters marked as shifted or absent, 26.9 lakh as deceased, and around 4 lakh as duplicates.
Chennai alone saw over 14 lakh deletions, representing more than 35 percent of its pre-SIR electorate in some assessments. Kolathur was among the highest-deletion constituencies in Chennai. Approximately 1.03 lakh voter names were deleted from Kolathur, the seat of DMK head and former chief minister M.K. Stalin.
The DMK had opposed the SIR from the time of announcement of the exercise, describing the compressed timeline as insufficient and warning of large-scale disenfranchisement of legitimate voters. Stalin had then directed party cadres to verify deletions booth by booth, particularly checking whether DMK supporters were among those removed.
In November last year, the party had also approached the Supreme Court against the SIR. The apex court closed the proceedings on DMK’s plea and 12 other petitions in July.
Stalin has publicly attributed part of his party’s defeat to the deletion of several lakh voters under SIR, claiming the exercise disproportionately affected genuine electors and amounted to a conspiracy that helped rivals, including the TVK.
Congress leaders in Tamil Nadu, including senior figures like P. Chidambaram, also raised concerns about the scale of removals under the shifted or absent category and called for verification.
The Congress has mounted a strong campaign against the SIR across states, demanding restoration of deleted names, a halt to the process, and accountability from the Election Commission and the central government. But Rahul’s silence on the deletions from electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu has given an opening for the DMK to attack the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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