The Congress Party’s decision to form an alliance with Vijay’s Tamil Nadu Vetri Kazhagam Party has created a rift not only within the India Alliance bloc, but also within the Congress Party itself. The latest of these incidents was veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar’s criticism of his party.
Aiyar on Friday criticized the party over the alliance’s move, saying it “violates” Mahatma Gandhi’s order to “govern by morality”. Track updates on TN government formation
“In November 1925, a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi put an injunction in his Gujarati magazine, Navjivan, that Swaraj should concern government with morality. It is this injunction that the Congress party, Mahatma Gandhi’s party, has violated in the recent decision to jump ship and join TVK. After opposing TVK in the last elections. This policy of expediency is not the way forward,” he said.
Actor-politician Vijay TVK defeated the ruling DMK, an ally of the Congress in the India Bloc, in the recently concluded Assembly elections. While Stalin’s MK lost the election, TVK, despite having the largest number of seats, did not come close to the halfway point of 118 seats required to form a stable government. TVK managed to get 105 seats.
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Following the May 4 results, the Congress, which won 5 seats in the Assembly elections, agreed to TVK’s request for their support in forming the government in Tamil Nadu. Even this alliance, which the Congress formed despite the risks of its opposition alliance at the centre, is not enough to form the government.
Launching a sharp attack on his party, Aiyar termed the move as ‘political flatness’ and said: “There is also a kind of political flatness in this decision because we thought that by defecting from the DMK alliance, the other junior members of the alliance, younger than us, would also defect, but none of them defected. Thus, we were left completely in limbo. We committed the immorality of joining forces with Vijay but we also committed the political stupidity of not ensuring that he gets a majority.”
Read also: The unimaginable AIADMK-DMK alliance hype, the kingmaker parties: What the TVK majority crisis has led to
“So, there is a suspended council, and we are hanging in the air. Is this either common sense, good policy, or good morals? What standard does this kind of expedient policy meet? I don’t think we can go ahead with this kind of policy,” the senior leader said.
With the Congress deciding to ally with TVK in Tamil Nadu, the DMK accused the Congress of challenging the alliance at a crucial moment.
Akhilesh Yadav digs hijab in Congress
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav also appears to have made a backdoor dig at the Congress for the TVK tie-up move after he posted a picture with TMC chief Mamata Banerjee with the caption: “We are not the ones who abandon each other in times of difficulty.”
Yadav met Mamata at her Kolkata residence on Thursday in the wake of the TMC election debacle as he was among the India Bloc leaders who supported her allegations of election rigging by the BJP which ousted Mamata from Bengal after 15 years.
The meeting was considered part of the opposition’s broader efforts to reevaluate the strategy after the recent loss in the House of Representatives elections.
