Rallying ‘TN under one banner’ to deny political space to communal forces and their stooges: MK Stalin

Galvanising the ruling DMK’s well-oiled election machinery to retain power in the 2026 assembly polls, Chief Minister and party president MK Stalin on Saturday said the Dravidian major’s ‘Oraniyil Tamil Nadu’ (TN under one banner) campaign, being launched from July 1 with an ambitious target of enrolling two crore membership, is aimed at denying any political space to communal forces and their stooges.

“The ‘Oraniyil Tamil Nadu’ campaign aims to ensure that there is no space in the state for those who disregard projects for Tamil Nadu, deny the civilisational pride of Tamil, and discriminate Tamil development in financial allocation by engaging only in communal polarisation as well as their stooges supporting them,” read a letter Stalin addressed to the party’s rank and file. Besides, the DMK president has been holding one-on-one meetings, christened ‘Udanpirappe Vaa’ (Come Brother), with party functionaries in each assembly constituency since June 12.

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Giving a clarion call to the cadre to make the campaign a grand success and bring Tamil Nadu under one banner so that the ‘phenomenal progress’ made by the Dravidian Model Government continues beyond 2026, Stalin asserted “The DMK, with a historical legacy, has clarity and determination about its path and journey, and has the strength to defeat all the canards and hurdles.”

A day after Stalin launches the campaign on July 1, District Secretaries, Ministers, MPs, and MLAs will hold rallies across the state to inaugurate the membership drive.

From July 3 onward, the party’s booth level agents and cadre from all its mass organisations, like the women’s wing and youth wing, will begin visiting each house in their locality, cutting across party lines, to explain the government’s achievements and the importance of the party’s ideology and polices in protecting the Tamil language, Tamil land, and its dignity.

Members can be enrolled digitally, through a mobile application, or manually. The DMK leadership aims to achieve a target of two crore memberships, as the state has roughly two crore households. The campaign seeks to enrol at least 30 per cent of voters in each booth.

As a precursor to the campaign, a training programme for the DMK’s IT Wing functionaries across the state was held at the party headquarters, ‘Anna Arivalayam’, in Chennai to prepare local-level functionaries and booth-level agents.

According to party sources, the roadmap for ‘Oraniyil Tamil Nadu’ and ‘Udanpirappe Vaa’ has been designed and is being monitored by the Populus Empowerment Network (PEN), which is handling the party’s poll-related strategies in coordination with Rishi Raj Singh’s I-PAC and Robin Sharma’s Show Time Consulting.