INDIA Bloc Meets In Delhi: Unity Tested by TMC Earthquake, DMK Exit And The TVK Question

The opposition INDIA bloc convened its long-awaited “INDIA Janbandhan” meeting at the Constitution Club of India in New Delhi on Monday noon, bringing together leaders from 23 parties.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Congress General Secretary K.C. Venugopal, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, and Bihar Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Yadav all attended. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, along with Left leaders John Brittas, Dipankar Bhattacharya, and P. Santhosh Kumar, also participated in the discussions. Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray joined virtually. PDP president and former J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was also present.

The DMK, once the INDIA bloc's most powerful southern anchor, stayed away entirely. The party had on June 4 formally announced it would boycott the meeting. The decision stemmed from a bitter fallout following the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, where Congress cut its long-standing ties with the DMK to join a coalition government led by actor-turned-politician C. Joseph Vijay's TVK.

"Respecting the feelings of party workers who have been deeply hurt by the betrayal inflicted on the DMK by the Congress after the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, the DMK will not participate in the INDIA alliance meeting," the party said. Senior DMK leader TKS Elangovan went further, telling reporters: "We are no more in the INDIA bloc, and that is why we are not attending the meeting. Congress stated that they are going with TVK and that they will fight the local body elections and the next parliamentary elections also with TVK. This means they are not with us."

Kanimozhi formally wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla requesting a change in seating arrangements for DMK MPs, arguing that sharing benches with Congress representatives was no longer appropriate. The Lok Sabha Secretariat approved the request. The Aam Aadmi Party, which has drifted away from the bloc since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, also did not attend.

The elephant in the room was Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay's TVK, the party that unseated the DMK and now governs Tamil Nadu with Congress support. Formal induction of the party into the bloc was not expected on Monday. TVK has no member in either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, and sources suggest only parties with parliamentary representation were invited for this meeting. The TVK was not yet a formal member of the alliance, though an announcement could come at a subsequent meeting, the source said. "The TVK will come in. The question is the right moment and the right framing," a senior Congress leader. "You cannot bring in the party running the Tamil Nadu government and alienate every other regional party in the same breath."

Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, who have publicly traded barbs as recently as last week, were in the same meeting hall. The two had a public spat just days earlier when Mufti wrote to Omar seeking a meeting to build a common platform on J&K issues.

Their presence in meeting, the sources said, underscoring that the INDIA bloc remains intact, for all its fractures, a platform that transcends local rivalries when national stakes demand it. Farooq Abdullah had made clear his party's commitment to the alliance: "The meeting is going to take place. Omar or I, one of us will go. Obviously, we are part of that. We will be there," he had said. For Omar, whose NC has announced its MLAs will protest in Delhi on the first day of the Monsoon Session over J&K statehood restoration, the meeting also served as a platform to build national solidarity around that demand.

The meeting comes in the backdrop of the recent assembly election outcomes, in which two main INDIA bloc constituents, the TMC and the DMK, were ousted from power in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu respectively.