Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar questioned the grand old party’s decision to back actor-turned politician Vijay’s TVK party after contesting elections in alliance with the DMK. Aiyar termed the party’s move a “political stupidity” as Congress could not even ensure majority for the TVK as latter emerged the single largest party in Tamil Nadu elections but fell short of attaining majority by just 10 seats.“After having opposed the TVK in the last election. Such politics of expediency is not the way forward. There’s also a certain political flat-footedness involved in this decision because we thought that by defecting from the DMK alliance, the other smaller members of the alliance, smaller even than us, would also defect, but none of them has defected. And therefore, we are left absolutely in limbo, we have committed the immorality of joining Vijay but also committed the political stupidity of not ensuring that he has a majority,” the veteran Congress leader told PTI.
Congress won 5 seats in Tamil Nadu and, with its support, TVK can manage 112 MLAs in its favour, still short of 5 MLAs. This has led to a political deadlock in the state as Vijay is looking to gain support from smaller parties like VCK, CPI and IUML, while reports suggest that talks are also ongoing with a faction of AIADMK.Aiyar termed Congress’s move a deviation fron Gandhian politics saying, “In November 1925, a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi laid down the injunction in his Gujarati magazine, Navjeevan, that Swaraj should mean government by morality. And it is this injunction that has been violated by the Congress Party, Mahatma Gandhi’s party, in the recent decision to jump ship and join the TVK.”“So, there is a hung assembly, and we are hanging in the air. Is this either good sense or good politics or good morality? What criterion is satisfied by this kind of politics of expediency? I don’t think we can move forward with this kind of politics,” he added.This comes a day after DMK passed a resolution slamming Congress’s move a “sudden political shift” and a “betrayal.”“Congress has failed to change its old political character. It secured one Rajya Sabha seat and 28 assembly constituencies as part of the DMK-led alliance, yet shifted towards an alternative front within days, undermining the victory achieved through the hard work of alliance cadres,” the resolution read.The DMK noted that Congress party’s actions were a direct threat to the stability of the state at a time when no single party holds a majority.
