Rahul Gandhi Meets CM Vijay in Chennai Before PM Modi’s Metro Ride Visit

The visit comes as Delhi witnesses a crackdown on protests, giving Gandhi’s decision to spend much of Saturday in Chennai an added political dimension. It is also his most significant political engagement in Tamil Nadu after a long period in which his appearances in a state once central to Congress’s national Opposition strategy had become strikingly rare.

After the DMK-led alliance swept all 40 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in 2024, Gandhi did not return for a political visit to thank Congress workers who had helped deliver the party all nine Tamil Nadu seats it contested. His limited appearances became a recurring complaint within the state unit. Even his exit from the old DMK arrangement this year came without the kind of political closure that might have been expected after years of partnership.

Much else has changed since. The Congress left the DMK alliance after the 2026 Assembly elections and joined Vijay’s government. K Selvaperunthagai, whose tenure as Tamil Nadu Congress president was marked by an internal struggle over whether the party should remain with the DMK, has been replaced by Manickam Tagore, a longtime Gandhi confidant who favoured the alternative course represented by Vijay.

However, even the lunch with Vijay was initially uncertain. The TVK leader had not publicly condemned Gandhi’s multiple detentions in Delhi during the protests over the course of this week, and people in the Congress leader’s circle had begun asking why he should make the journey to meet a CM whose team appeared hesitant about receiving him.

On the other side, Vijay’s camp had its own reservations about the meeting. For a time, the awkwardness was almost symmetrical. Gandhi’s people wondered why Vijay was reluctant to meet him, while the Tamil Nadu CM’s people wondered why the meeting was being treated as something he was obliged to grant. The confirmation of lunch therefore resolved a small but revealing episode of mistrust inside a new alliance.

Appearance with Modi

The timing gives the meeting another layer. A day after hosting Gandhi at his Neelankarai home, Vijay is scheduled to appear with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 11 for the inauguration of the first operational stretch of Chennai Metro Phase II – their first joint public appearance since Vijay became CM.

The programme is administrative, with Modi set to inaugurate the 14.64-km Poonamallee-Vadapalani stretch and travel with Vijay by Metro from Poonamallee towards Porur. But its political optics are difficult to separate from the event. For Modi, travelling beside one of Tamil Nadu’s most popular political figures provides an unusually powerful public frame in a state where the BJP has struggled to acquire one of its own. For Vijay, the sequence is equally striking. Lunch with the principal national Opposition leader on Saturday, a Metro ride with the PM on Sunday, the obligations of governing place him physically beside the two poles of national politics.

The setting itself captures how quickly Tamil Nadu politics has rearranged itself. Vijay and Gandhi last met when the Congress leader attended Vijay’s swearing-in as CM. Saturday’s meal at Vijay’s home is their first meeting since the new Secular Social Justice Victory Alliance took shape and comes a day after the TVK won both the Madurantakam and Dharapuram Assembly by-elections.

Statements from sections of the TVK projecting Vijay as a possible PM candidate in 2029 prompted Congress leaders to publicly reject the idea. Tagore has separately maintained that Gandhi remains the Congress’s choice.

That makes lunch potentially more useful than another stage appearance. The Congress and the TVK must manage an unusual arrangement in which Vijay is the unquestioned leader of their Tamil Nadu coalition, while Gandhi remains Congress’s national claimant for 2029. Congress leaders also say that the TVK has become part of the INDIA bloc at the state level and is expected to participate in protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

After lunch, Gandhi will move to Island Grounds, where the Congress says between 1 lakh and 1.5 lakh students have registered to connect with the programme directly or indirectly. Entry to the venue is restricted to registered students through QR codes. Later, he is expected to meet Congress leaders at Taj Coromandel before flying back to Delhi around 9.30 pm.