'Whose victory was it?' Thirumavalavan's SIR doubts unsettle TVK and his own allies
At a Delhi protest against the Election Commission, VCK president Thol. Thirumavalavan raised doubts over TVK's recent victory and linked it to the SIR process, sending mixed signals to cadre and allies.
Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi president Thol. Thirumavalavan has done what few alliance leaders say aloud: at a recent protest in New Delhi against the Election Commission of India, he raised doubts over the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam's recent victory in Tamil Nadu and attributed its success to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The remark, reported from the protest, has sent mixed signals to his own cadre and to party leaders watching the SIR row widen.
The claim matters because of who makes it. Thirumavalavan is not a commentator outside the process; last November he moved the Supreme Court against the Tamil Nadu SIR itself, arguing that a rushed and opaque revision months before the April-May 2026 polls would unduly burden Dalits, Adivasis, migrant labourers, the working class, women who relocate after marriage, persons with disabilities and the elderly. His petition said the state had completed a Special Summary Revision as recently as January 2025, leaving no plausible justification for an intensive exercise so close to an election.
Others in the opposition are choosing their words more carefully. Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram has said voter deletions were wrong and that removed names should have remained on the rolls, but that it is not yet established that deletions caused TVK's win or the DMK's defeat. That distinction, between a process that wrongs voters and a proven effect on the result, is now the line running through the alliance.
DMK voices have been blunter. Citing a media report, DMK's Annadurai claimed that among 135 constituencies where more than 20,000 voters were deleted, TVK won 84, and that in the 10 constituencies with more than 80,000 deletions, TVK won all 10. Those figures are claims in a political argument, not a court finding, but they explain why Thirumavalavan's doubt lands with force: if deletion-heavy seats broke overwhelmingly one way, the burden of explanation cannot rest only on the losers.
For the TVK government, the question is uncomfortable precisely because it is institutional, not personal. A mandate is strongest when the roll that produced it is beyond dispute. Until the Commission publishes a constituency-level audit of deletions, restorations and appeals that citizens can check, every close result in Tamil Nadu will carry an asterisk in the public mind, and the government that benefits from the roll will govern under its shadow.