Having suffered morale-sapping defeats in the recent Assembly elections, the Congress appears to be rapidly recalibrating its INDIA bloc strategy, with surprising outreach to both Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) chief Vijay in Tamil Nadu and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal.

Even as tensions with the DMK threaten to rupture one of the Opposition alliance’s oldest equations, the Congress leadership on Tuesday signalled openness to backing Vijay, whose TVK emerged as the surprise winner in Tamil Nadu but remains short of a majority.

After a meeting chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by Rahul Gandhi and AICC Tamil Nadu in-charge Girish Chodankar, Congress general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal indicated the party was ready to support a “secular government committed to protecting the Constitution”.

“Thiru Vijay has spoken about drawing inspiration from perunthalaivar Kamaraj also. Accordingly, the Congress leadership has directed the TNCC to take a final decision… keeping in view the sentiments of the state reflected in the electoral verdict,” Venugopal said.

Soon after, Chodankar convened a Zoom meeting of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee to discuss the issue.

Sources said a section of the Congress leadership and newly elected MLAs in the state favour extending support to the TVK.

The development is significant because Rahul Gandhi is believed to have privately favoured a pre-poll alliance with Vijay’s party. He is also reported to have expressed unhappiness with the Congress continuing alongside the DMK, which lost power and finished a distant second in the elections.

In the 234-member Tamil Nadu Assembly, the TVK has won 108 seats, falling 10 short of a majority, while the Congress has five MLAs.

The emerging Congress-TVK warmth could further strain ties with the DMK and potentially weaken the INDIA bloc in the South. However, leaders backing a Vijay tie-up argue that the Congress cannot afford to ignore the “sentiments of youths” in Tamil Nadu or the implications for the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, where the party currently has nine MPs from the state.

One compromise being considered is for Congress MLAs to abstain during Vijay’s trust vote, thereby avoiding a confrontation with the DMK.

At the same time, Congress leaders are attempting to repair ties with Mamata Banerjee after the TMC’s crushing defeat in Bengal. Relations between the Congress and the TMC had deteriorated sharply during the campaign, especially after Rahul Gandhi’s attacks on Mamata.

Yet Gandhi was among the first Opposition leaders to endorse Mamata’s allegations of “vote loot” after the results.

Posting on social media, he claimed Assam and Bengal were “clear cases of the election being stolen by the BJP with the support of the EC”.

He later followed up with a phone call to both Mamata and Vijay, while notably remaining silent on the DMK’s defeat and MK Stalin’s personal loss.

Mamata, too, struck a conciliatory tone on Tuesday, revealing she had spoken to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi after the results. She also said several INDIA bloc leaders, including Akhilesh Yadav, Hemant Soren, Tejashwi Yadav, Arvind Kejriwal, and Uddhav Thackeray, had reached out to her in solidarity.

The rapid political recalibrations suggest the INDIA bloc is entering a new phase after the twin setbacks suffered by two of its strongest regional pillars, the TMC and the DMK.