Tamil Nadu: Former AIADMK MP V Maitreyan joins DMK in presence of CM Stalin

Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], August 13 (ANI): Former All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) Rajya Sabha MP V Maitreyan has quit the opposition party and joined the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the presence of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin.
"To protect the well-being of Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin is in the field following the footsteps of Kalaignar Karunanidhi. Tamil Nadu people are behind Thalapathy, and now I have also joined as a Sepoy to him. DMK is going to win the Assembly elections in 2026. The election is for second place only," Maitreyan told reporters.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Chief Minister Stalin accused the BJP of "turning the Election Commission into its poll rigging machinery" and stated that the DMK stands "shoulder to shoulder" in this fight.
In a post on X, Stalin wrote, "The BJP has turned the Election Commission into its poll rigging machinery. What happened in Bengaluru's Mahadevapura is not an administrative lapse; it is a calculated conspiracy to steal the people's mandate."
His post came amid allegations of "vote chori" (vote theft) by Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, and ahead of a planned march by the INDIA bloc MPs from Parliament to the Election Commission to protest over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.
"The VoteTheft evidence presented by my brother and LoP Thiru. Rahul Gandhi exposes the scale of this fraud. Today, as Thiru. Rahul Gandhi leads MPs of the INDIA bloc in a march from Parliament House to the ECI, we demand," Stalin stated.
He called for the immediate release of complete machine-readable voter rolls for every state, an end to "politically driven deletions", and an independent probe into what he described as the "subversion of our democracy".
"DMK stands shoulder to shoulder in this fight. We will not watch in silence while the BJP robs India's democracy in broad daylight," Stalin added. (ANI)