Four months into a new government's tenure, DMK president M. K. Stalin has issued one of his sharpest broadsides yet — accusing Tamil Nadu's ruling administration of pushing the state to the top of a list no one wants to lead: inflation and price rise. In a blistering post on Tuesday, 13 October 2026, Stalin catalogued what he called a cascading failure of governance — from soaring essential commodity prices to a looming electricity crisis and a dam-opening decision he says was taken on an astrologer's advice rather than farmers' counsel.

The inflation charge and a minister's 'brazen lie'

Stalin opened his attack on the price front, writing — 'த.வெ.க. ஆட்சி அமைந்த நான்கே மாதங்களில் தமிழ்நாடு முதலிடம்!' ('In just four months of the ruling government, Tamil Nadu has taken first place!') — and then turned the irony: first place in inflation and rising costs of essential goods. He accused the Food Minister of issuing what he called a 'thoroughly filtered lie' — claiming publicly that no price rise has occurred — and said that lie has left ordinary poor citizens seething.

Price management of essential commodities has long been a political flashpoint in Tamil Nadu. Both the DMK and the AIADMK have traded accusations on this front across multiple election cycles, making it a perennial instrument of opposition politics in the state.

Power at ₹35 a unit — and cancelled cheaper contracts

The electricity section of Stalin's post carried the heaviest financial charge. He alleged that while opposition parties had been warning about power cuts for months, the government did nothing — and that the Electricity Minister was busy pointing to Punjab as a reference while the Chief Minister flew off to London. Now, he claimed, the administration is scrambling to buy power on the open market at ₹35 per unit — a rate he described as the highest any Indian state has ever paid.

He went further: the government, he alleged, cancelled lower-cost electricity purchase agreements made during the previous DMK (Kalacham) administration before turning to this expensive emergency procurement. 'Whose money is this?' he asked pointedly, tying the power expenditure to a separate accusation that the ruling party had openly admitted to planning the purchase of 15 more AIADMK MLAs — and suggesting the two financial drains might be connected in public perception.

Tamil Nadu's electricity procurement costs and load-shedding cycles have drawn political fire since the 2010s, when the state first faced acute shortfalls. The specific figures Stalin cited — the ₹35-per-unit rate and the contract cancellations — could not be independently verified from available records, but the structural pattern of last-minute open-market power purchases at a premium is a well-documented feature of state electricity boards across India during demand spikes.

Mettur Dam, an astrologer, and farmers without water

Stalin's agricultural indictment centred on Mettur Dam, the lifeline of the Cauvery delta. He alleged that after the kuruvai (short-season) crop had already failed, the government compounded the damage by opening the dam on the wrong date — ignoring the pleas of delta farmers and, he charged, acting instead on an astrologer's recommendation. A ₹5-crore roadside barricade project, he said, generated footage for the Chief Minister's social media reels but delivered nothing of agricultural value.

With the samba (main-season) cultivation window now in doubt, he said, tail-end farmers in the delta are struggling without water. Mettur's opening date has been politically contested in the Cauvery basin for decades — successive governments have faced protests from Thanjavur and surrounding districts when water arrives late or in insufficient quantities.

A cabinet compared to 'monkeys with tails on fire'

Stalin's closing was rhetorical thunder. He described the ruling cabinet as a group with 'neither foresight nor brains' — and invoked the Tamil literary image of monkeys with burning tails leaping through a forest and setting it ablaze. The Chief Minister, he wrote, was busy gracing functions in Udupi, London, and Vijayawada — 'one city per month' — while Tamil Nadu deteriorated before the public's eyes.

His sign-off was not a political slogan but a statement of anxiety: that given this 'negligence and destructiveness', the overriding fear is how the people of Tamil Nadu will cope in the months ahead.

The hashtag #Collectionகுமாரு appended to the post is a pointed local political reference — a label that has circulated in Tamil political discourse as a nickname for political operators associated with financial 'collection' or transactional politics.