From the stage to the Commission: TVK drags its Dharapuram grievance to the Election Commission

COIMBATORE: The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) will move the Election Commission of India against Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president M.K. Stalin over his alleged remarks about the party's Dharapuram candidate, taking a campaign-stage grievance into the formal machinery of electoral law with polling three days away.

Minister C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar told reporters in Coimbatore on Saturday that the party would file a complaint with the Election Commission against the “body-shaming” remarks Stalin allegedly made about P. Sathyabama during his campaign in Dharapuram on Friday. It was condemnable, the minister said, that Stalin could speak this way about a Scheduled Caste woman contesting the polls.

The complaint is the escalation of a row that began a day earlier. On Friday, TVK ministers Sengottaiyan and Arun Raj demanded an apology from Stalin, accusing him of using insulting, humiliating language about Sathyabama during his Dharapuram rally in support of the DMK candidate Sukanya. One report quoted Stalin as invoking the nickname “Petti Bama” — a reference to Sathyabama's May switch from the AIADMK to the TVK, which her critics have alleged was driven by money. Vijay and the TVK have rejected that charge, saying she resigned her seat before switching.

No transcript of Stalin's speech has been released, and neither Stalin nor the DMK has publicly responded to the allegations — leaving the exact wording and context of the disputed remarks unverified, even as the complaint machinery moves.

The TVK has framed the episode as a question of dignity: Keerthana called it a “new low” in political dialogue and said women in Dharapuram would issue a collective statement on polling day; Sengottaiyan questioned whether mocking a woman candidate counted as campaigning at all. The DMK, meanwhile, has given no sign of an apology — or a denial.

The timing is political. Campaigning ends on Sunday evening; Dharapuram votes on Tuesday, October 6, with counting on October 9. The complaint lands in the same hours that the chief minister himself descends on the region — Vijay drives from Coimbatore to Dharapuram on Sunday for a final push, with some 2,000 police reportedly deployed along his route.

Whether the Election Commission acts on a complaint built on an unverified transcript is an open question. What is not open to question is the campaign logic: in the final 72 hours of a bypoll the ruling party cannot afford to lose, every outrage becomes ammunition.