Congress Dumps DMK for Vijay — and Bets on Tamil Nadu Reset
Congress is trading a long DMK alliance for Vijay’s TVK, hoping a fresh partner gives it more room than Stalin ever would.
Congress has formally extended support to actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam to form the next government in Tamil Nadu, ending its alliance with the DMK, according to 
The Hindu and 
The Indian Express. The party says the arrangement is not just for government formation but also for future local body, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha contests, while making TVK’s anti-BJP line a condition of support, The Hindu reported.
Why Congress is moving
This is less a conversion than a calculation. The Indian Express analysis says Congress has spent years as the junior partner in Tamil Nadu, riding DMK’s organisation and resources into office but losing its own ground game in the process. Under the DMK, Congress can win seats; it cannot easily build a cadre, claim independent credit, or negotiate from strength. TVK offers a different deal: a charismatic but still-early-stage party that needs Congress more than it can dominate Congress, as The Indian Express argues.
That is the core power shift. Vijay’s TVK has the momentum; Congress has the institutional brand and a handful of MLAs. By moving now, Congress is betting that the new party is still porous enough to share space, while the DMK has become too stratified to offer autonomy. In 
India, that matters because coalition politics is not just about seats — it is about who controls candidate selection, money, and the post-election agenda.
Who gains, who loses
Vijay gains immediate legitimacy. Congress’s support helps him present TVK as more than a personal wave, and it gives him a national party cover that the DMK can no longer deny him. Congress also gains a shot at relevance in a state where its old alliance had begun to look static. The party’s Tamil Nadu leaders are already framing the deal as a “mutual respect” arrangement with “appropriate share” in the government, The Hindu reported.
The DMK is the loser. It loses a long-time ally and, more importantly, the signal value of being the natural anchor of the anti-BJP front in Tamil Nadu. The rupture also complicates INDIA bloc optics: Congress and DMK can still coexist nationally, but their state-level mistrust now has a name and a cost, 
The New Indian Express noted.
The numbers sharpen the point. TVK won 108 seats in the 234-member Assembly, DMK 59, and Congress five, while the Governor has asked Vijay to produce proof of majority support before he can be invited to form government, The Hindu reported. Congress’s five MLAs matter less for immediate arithmetic than for the coalition signal they send.
What to watch next
The next decision point is whether Congress turns this into a durable Tamil Nadu strategy or a one-off break with DMK. Watch three things: whether TVK keeps the BJP out, whether Congress’s support extends into local-body and Rajya Sabha seat talks, and whether the DMK retaliates by hardening its line inside the wider opposition camp. If this holds, Tamil Nadu stops being a simple DMK-Congress axis and becomes a more fluid three-way bargaining arena — exactly the kind of arrangement that rewards the party with the most disciplined organisation.
