Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin on Wednesday participated in the Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar and shared a dais with Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav and other Opposition leaders, prompting the BJP to hit back by accusing him of insulting Biharis.

An old video of Stalin circulated by a BJP leader has Tamil audio, but it's accompanied with Hindi subtitles. According to the translation, the speaker is arguing against the imposition of Hindi, saying that despite studying Hindi, the people of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh do menial jobs (in Tamil Nadu).

Stalin told a rally in Muzaffarpur that the Election Commission, now conducting a special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar, was functioning like a “remote-controlled puppet” of the BJP.

Wednesday was the 11th day of the Yatra, being held against the SIR that the Opposition believes is a way of “stealing votes” for the BJP by disenfranchising millions. The 16-day programme will end with a rally in Patna on September 1.

The BJP launched a coordinated attack on Stalin, pulling out videos purportedly showing him and other DMK leaders making “insulting” remarks about the people of Bihar.

Former Tamil Nadu BJP chief K. Annamalai posted on X what he described as a compilation of “uncouth remarks” by DMK leaders and their allies about Biharis, and north Indians in general. He dared Stalin to repeat those comments from the dais in Bihar.

“TN CM Thiru @mkstalin avl is in Bihar today. Here is an evergreen compilation of his, his party members’, and his alliance partners’ uncouth remarks about our Bihari brothers and sisters,” he wrote.

“Hope he takes the stage with Thiru @RahulGandhi avl and proudly repeats every one of those insults in front of the very people he and his party members mocked.”

Annamalai attached a video with the text.

BJP social media head Amit Malviya posted: “In his (Stalin’s) party, there is hardly any leader who has not insulted Bihar and Sanatan Dharma. Stalin himself has expressed deep hatred and animosity towards Bihar multiple times. Such statements are enough to boil the blood of every Bihari.”

He added: “But (RJD leader) Tejashwi Yadav is rolling out the red carpet to welcome precisely these people. Bihar is asking – until when will it have to endure a new insult every day? Give an answer, Tejashwi!”

Samrat Choudhary, Bihar deputy chief minister and the BJP’s potential chief ministerial candidate, accused RJD supreme leader Lalu Prasad and his family of inviting leaders who had “insulted the people of Bihar and Sanatan Dharma”.

The BJP had on Tuesday ripped into Telangana’s Congress chief minister, Revanth Reddy, who had joined the Yatra. Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is to join the Yatra on Thursday.

Stalin spoke in Tamil, and his words were translated into Hindi for the crowd at the rally.

“Bihar has again become the epicentre of India’s democratic battle. The BJP cannot crush the people’s power by deleting voters or hijacking institutions,” he said.

Stalin described the deletion of 65 lakh names — which figured in the existing electoral rolls but have been excluded from the SIR’s draft rolls — as the “murder of democracy”.