Dharapuram bypoll: TVK to file Election Commission complaint over DMK's alleged remarks against woman candidate

Chennai: The ruling Tamil Nadu Vettri Kazhagam will file a formal complaint with the Election Commission of India against DMK president M.K. Stalin and Leader of the Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin over remarks they allegedly made about TVK candidate Sathyabama during the Dharapuram Assembly bypoll campaign, state minister R. Nirmal Kumar announced on Saturday. The complaint centres on Stalin's address at a campaign rally in Dharapuram on Friday, where he spoke in support of DMK candidate Sukanya. According to TVK ministers, the DMK leader referred to derogatory nicknames used against Sathyabama — the TVK's candidate in the October 6 bypoll — in a way that attacked the dignity of a woman candidate. Minister Sengottaiyan took to X to demand a public apology, asking whether the remarks counted as election campaigning or "an offensive attempt to ridicule women", and accused Stalin of shifting positions on justice, caste and discrimination. Minister Arun Raj echoed the charge, calling the language humiliating. Nirmal Kumar said the party would approach the poll body alleging a violation of the Model Code of Conduct, described the DMK as a "harmful force" to society, and predicted a decisive defeat in the bypoll. He also reiterated the TVK government's opposition to the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. What is striking is what the complaint does not contain. No transcript or full recording of Stalin's speech has been released; the exact wording and its context remain unverified, and the DMK has not publicly responded to the allegations. What began as a campaign remark — neither denied nor confirmed — is now being processed through the machinery of the state: a government complaint to the Election Commission, ministers demanding apologies on social media, and a bypoll that increasingly resembles a shouting match rather than a contest of ideas. Sathyabama herself has called the remarks an insult to women in politics. Yet the woman candidate at the centre of this storm is once again being talked about rather than talked with — a prop in a dispute between two party machines, each accusing the other of disrespecting women while neither centres her policies or the needs of Dharapuram's voters. The constituency's real questions — water, wages, caste dignity — are being buried under the noise. The irony is hard to miss. A government whose MLAs make headlines for stunt governance — one drove a packed government bus without a licence just this week — now wraps itself in the flag of women's dignity and the Commission's process. When the machinery of the state becomes a campaign prop, the code of conduct is not being defended; it is being deployed.