Tagore confident Vijay will back Rahul Gandhi as INDIA bloc's PM face

Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president B. Manickam Tagore has said he is fully confident that Chief Minister and TVK leader C. Joseph Vijay will endorse Rahul Gandhi as the INDIA bloc's prime ministerial candidate for the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.

In an interview, Mr. Tagore said he expected Mr. Vijay to make such an announcement ahead of the parliamentary election. Asked about TVK's second-rung leaders projecting Mr. Vijay as a future prime minister, he said such slogans were no longer being raised. He described them as the personal wishes of a few individuals, adding that the TVK chief would declare whom the party supports once elections draw near. The Tamil Nadu Congress will contest the polls projecting Mr. Gandhi, and Mr. Tagore said he was cent per cent certain Mr. Vijay would back that position.

On the DMK, which left the INDIA bloc after the Congress joined the TVK-led Ministry following the Assembly polls, Mr. Tagore said the party would not succeed in the Lok Sabha elections even if it assembled a national-level third front. Recalling that the DMK had contested alone in 2014, he predicted a repeat of that outcome and said the party's talk of a third front would end with it finishing third in the by-elections.

He rejected the suggestion that the DMK's departure had weakened the Opposition nationally. Citing the parliamentary session, he said the Opposition had prevented the session from functioning despite claims that it could achieve nothing, and asserted that all 23 members of the INDIA bloc remained ideologically united.

Mr. Tagore said movements such as the Cockroach Janata Party might persist as a phenomenon for some time, but that the prospects of a genuine third front taking shape were slim. He alleged that the BJP fabricated narratives about third fronts solely to split Opposition votes.

Asked whether TVK would take an aggressive stance against the BJP, he noted that TVK is a young party and said it stands with the Congress on issues such as delimitation. He pointed to the Secular Social Justice Victory Alliance in Tamil Nadu, saying the grouping would collectively decide its course whenever the BJP acted against the State's interests, and expressed confidence that TVK would stand with them on the protest ground.

On TVK's silence over several national issues, Mr. Tagore said every party has its own style and that one cannot expect a party to prove itself daily or issue statements every day.