On Tuesday, DMK chief Saravanan Annadurai blasted Rahul Gandhi on X, asking why he has not endorsed the DMK’s call to dissolve all state governments elected after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list in Tamil Nadu. The post read, “Why is he afraid of @actorvijay to speak about SIR in Tamil Nadu. What a duplicitous man.”
The DMK had recently dissolved its alliance with the Congress, leaving the party isolated after the April elections. The break triggered the DMK to pull out of the INDIA bloc and refuse to attend last week’s strategy meeting aimed at coordinating a nationwide walkout of the Election Commission.
SIR, a governmental effort to purge duplicate and illegal names from the electoral roll, has removed about 2.5 lakh voters in Tamil Nadu alone. Annadurai accused Gandhi of shielding the central government’s “vote‑buying” agenda, while Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge warned that the Commission was acting under the ruling party’s direction, threatening the integrity of the franchise.
Rahul Gandhi marched from Parliament to the Election Commission office in Delhi this week, leading a sit‑in that has already drawn 70,000 protestors. A Tamil Nadu resident who attended the march said the protest felt “real, not just rhetoric,” noting that many voters fear their names might be erased without notice.
The sit‑in is set to continue until the Election Commission announces a review of the SIR changes, with opposition leaders calling for a vote of no confidence in the government should the Commission fail to reverse the deletions. The next council meeting is scheduled for Friday, 12 November, where the fate of the SIR‑affected list will be debated.