Decode Politics: Why, despite the rows he triggers, A Raja remains a key leader for DMK

The DMK and Congress may have stitched up their alliance in Tamil Nadu for the Lok Sabha polls without much of a problem, but for their national INDIA alliance, one sore point remains – abrasive comments from DMK leaders that end up putting the party’s northern allies in a spot of bother and the BJP on the offensive.

While last September it was Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remarks about “eradicating Sanatan Dharma” — comments that drew a rebuke from the Supreme Court last week — in December DMK’s Dharmapuri MP D N V Senthilkumar dragged his party back into the BJP’s line of fire, and INDIA alliance into hot water, with his remarks on Hindi-speaking states. Now, it is the turn of former Union Minister A Raja, who on March 1 said India was not a nation in conventional terms with one language, one culture and one tradition. It was not a country, but a subcontinent, he said. Raja’s comments, at a time when the Modi government has accused the Opposition of encouraging talk of a “North-South divide”, drew a strong response from the Congress, and the RJD, another INDIA bloc party, distanced itself.

The DMK’s Dalit face and the Nilgiris MP, Raja shot to national limelight when he was named as an accused in the 2G scam case as he was the Union Telecom Minister at the time. He was acquitted in the case in 2017.

In the DMK though, Raja was a well-known face, seen as having grown into a close confidant of DMK founder M Karunanidhi after entering the DMK in the early 1990s following the vacuum left by the departure of a leader such as Vaiko. Elected to the Lok Sabha from Perambalur in 1996, when still in his early 30s, he saw a meteoric rise. He became a Union minister in his first term as a parliamentarian and remained part of Karunanidhi’s