A faux pas by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin – referring to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi as ‘Rajiv Gandhi’, his father and ex-Prime Minister – at a ‘Voter Adhikar‘ rally in poll-bound Bihar this week, has been gleefully pounced upon by the BJP and Tamil actor-politician Vijay’s TVK.
Mr Stalin was speaking at a rally hosted by the Congress-led INDIA bloc, which is protesting the Election Commission’s ‘special intensive revision’ of Bihar voter lists – an exercise taking place months before the election and amid oppositions claims of ‘collusion’ to commit voter fraud.
In a video that has been widely shared online, the Tamil Nadu leader begins his speech by acknowledging (or trying to) Rahul Gandhi as one of the organisers of the ‘Voter Adhikar’ rally.
Unfortunately for Mr Stalin, he referred to Rajiv Gandhi instead.
The blooper was noted and rectified by the Chief Minister’s DMK; the party’s tech gurus patched him saying ‘Rahul Gandhi’ over that bit. But the patch just did not sync with the rest of the video.
At the time of publishing this report the edited video – with the jarring ‘Rahul Gandhi’ swap-out for ‘Rajiv Gandhi’ – is still available on MK Stalin’s YouTube channel.
The DMK has made no further comment on the matter, dismissing attacks as ‘petty politics’.
But the patch only provided further ammo for the BJP and TVK.
K Annamalai, the BJP’s ex-Tamil Nadu chief and a fierce DMK critic, ripped into MK Stalin and his “patchwork government” on X, posting the original and unpatched sequences side-by-side.
“Going all the way to Bihar and getting the name wrong… despite reading it from a piece of paper… is one thing. But the desperate attempt to patch it up is even more telling,” he said.
The TVK, launched in February last year by actor Vijay, and widely seen as a dark horse for the 2026 election, also chipped in and mocked ‘uncle’ Stalin for his mistake.
Comic relief aside, MK Stalin’s appearance at the Bihar rally has also drawn political jibes from the BJP as it hits back against the opposition’s ‘Voter Adhikar’ line of attack. A photo of three senior opposition leaders – Mr Gandhi, Mr Stalin, and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav – provided the ammo this time.
The BJP was quick to declare them as ‘hopeless, out-of-sync dynasts’, referring to the politically powerful family each leader hails from.
The BJP also raked up past disparaging remarks made by DMK leaders about people from Bihar, and declared, “His visit to Bihar is nothing but a political charade, an effort to whitewash the deep-seated disdain his party has shown towards Biharis.
