Communist Party of India (CPI) senior leader and former Tamil Nadu state secretary Mutharasan has said that his party will also demand additional constituencies from the DMK in the coming elections, just as other parties in the alliance are doing.

He stressed that the CPI–DMK tie-up is an alliance built on ideology rather than on seat numbers alone, which is why it has continued for the past ten years.

Speaking to reporters in Coimbatore, Mutharasan criticised the labour codes introduced by the Union government, saying they go against workers’ rights and must be withdrawn. Failing this, he warned, workers’ struggles could erupt on the scale of the farmers’ protests in Delhi, as organised labour will be forced to resist the laws.

He accused the BJP of trying multiple strategies to expand in Tamil Nadu but failing to grow through religion-based politics. Unlike in Ayodhya, he said, the party cannot replicate such a religious agenda in the state, and is therefore attempting to politicise religious events like the Karthigai Deepam at Tirupparankundram hill, with the goal of creating tension and gaining political mileage.

Mutharasan recalled that when a similar controversy arose during the late Jayalalithaa’s regime, she firmly rejected such moves, and the courts also delivered a clear verdict then.

He condemned AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami for now backing the BJP on this issue, despite earlier claiming that “policy is one thing and alliance is another”, and said the AIADMK is today merely nodding to whatever the BJP says.

On the Election Commission’s SIR (Special Intensive Revision) exercise, Mutharasan alleged that it is being conducted in a way that creates confusion about the Tamil Nadu polls. This, he said, has raised doubts among the people over whether elections in the state will be held in a proper and transparent manner.