Congress leaves DMK for TVK: Why this post-poll break-up is a first in their decades-old alliance

With DMK spokespersons accusing the Congress of being “backstabbers”, this move by the latter brings to an end what had otherwise been a mostly steadfast alliance for the past two decades or so. Here’s the history of their political equation over the years.

Changing allegiances

When the DMK first came to power in the Tamil Nadu Assembly election in 1967, it was the Congress that it defeated on the electoral planks of anti-Hindi imposition and federalism. Even in the general election that year, the DMK-led alliance went on to win 36 out of the state’s 39 seats, reducing the Congress to a mere 3 (from 31 in 1962).

However, when the Congress itself broke into two factions — one led by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the other led by Tamil Nadu Congress stalwart K Kamaraj — in 1969, the DMK chose to ally with the Indira-led faction for the 1971 general election. But with the birth of the M G Ramachandran (MGR)-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) a year later, Indira soon moved to tie up with the new party.

In the 1977 general election, held in the aftermath of the Emergency (1975-77) imposed by Indira, this new combine managed to sweep the polls in the state, even as Indira lost power at the Centre. But this too broke down in 1979, when MGR refused to support Indira’s bid to return to the Lok Sabha through a parliamentary by-election in Thanjavur. In 1980, the Congress again tied up with the DMK for the general election only to go back to the AIADMK four years later, with whom it stayed until MGR’s demise in 1987.

In the 1990s, the Congress allied with the AIADMK when Jayalalithaa was in power (1991-96). But they parted ways in 1998 when Jayalalithaa joined hands with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP, only for her to break that too in 1999 when her party brought down the then BJP-led government at the Centre in a no-confidence motion by a single vote.

That same year, the DMK allied with the BJP for the first (and only) time by becoming a constituent of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ahead of the general election, where it stayed for the next four years. But a few months before the 2004 Lok Sabha election, the DMK withdrew its support and tied with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

Then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and DMK party chief M Karunanidhi called on Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi on October 29, 1998. Photo: Express Archive

The DMK was an integral part of the UPA government (2004-14), the alliance remaining in place even as the alliance was strained over the 2G spectrum case. Then, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ordered probes into the 2G spectrum allocation, which implicated senior DMK leaders such as A Raja (who was Union Telecom Minister) and K Kanimozhi (then a Rajya Sabha MP). The two leaders spent considerable time in prison before a special court finally acquitted them in 2017.

A year before the 2014 general election, the DMK broke ties with the Congress over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue. After both parties suffered electorally as Jayalalithaa swept the polls, the two resumed ties ahead of the 2016 Assembly election.

The TVK dilemma

Before the latest election results, the TVK had emerged as the only major point of possible rupture between the two parties.

Since 2004, the two parties had contested most elections nationally and at the state level together. DMK chief (and outgoing Tamil Nadu Chief Minister) M K Stalin was the first major Opposition leader to endorse Rahul Gandhi as a prime ministerial candidate ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Even during the 2024 general election campaign, the personal bonhomie between the two leaders was on full display when Gandhi addressed Stalin as his “elder brother” in a public rally.

In 2021, when the DMK returned to power in Tamil Nadu after a decade as part of an alliance comprising the Congress and other smaller parties, there were rumours of discontent among Congress party leaders over the DMK’s refusal to share power (in the form of ministries) in the state government. But the Congress, given its dwindling footprint in various states across the country, chose not to treat it as a deal-breaker.

But ahead of the 2026 Assembly election, a section of state Congress leaders reportedly wanted the party to explore an alliance with TVK in order to contest a higher number of seats than they would be allocated in its existing alliance with the DMK. There were also murmurs that some Congress leaders had read the tea leaves as far as anti-incumbency against the ruling DMK was concerned.

The fact that both Stalin and Rahul had not campaigned together ahead of the election also gave rise to rumours that all was not well between the two parties. But the Congress attempted to play that down by calling it more of a logistical issue. Eventually, the party chose to stick with the DMK-led alliance, wherein it contested 28 seats and won 5.

Now, with the TVK preparing to form the government after its spectacular electoral debut, the Congress’s move towards Vijay’s party is likely to affect its ties with its long-time ally.