Tamil Nadu chief minister C Joseph Vijay-led TVK has joined the Opposition’s protest in Chennai against chief election commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan said on Friday.
“TVK has already joined the INDIA bloc. They are against the Election Commission and the Union government. TVK’s participation in the protest follows a series of political engagements with opposition parties in Tamil Nadu. The meeting discussed coordinated opposition to the BJP-led Union government and the SIR exercise. The parties also passed resolutions, including one welcoming TVK into the state-level opposition grouping. The meeting fuelled further discussion about cooperation between the Congress and TVK.
Speaking about TVK’s participation in the protest on October 15, Thirumavalavan said the party had recently joined the INDIA bloc ’s Tamil Nadu unit and was expected to participate in similar protests at the national level in the future. On October 3, representatives of the party attended a meeting of the state-level INDIA bloc, which included the Congress, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the VCK, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). The development came days after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met Vijay at his residence in Chennai on October 10.
Recently, they have joined the Tamil Nadu unit; later on, they will participate in the protest at the national level,” he told ANI. They attended the INDIA bloc protest yesterday.
