In what comes across as a below-the-belt act by a DMK minister, PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan, using a campaign rally podium, he publicly doxxed an anonymous X handle. This came about despite the handle simping for the ruling DMK government over the years.
What PTR Said at the Rally
At a campaign rally in Madurai, PTR delivered a combative speech targeting what he called “evil forces” spreading lies in his constituency. In the course of the speech, he named Sandhya Ravishank, Vinod Arulappan, Chennai Updates, Parthiban Kumar, AC Shanmugam and the ‘Cinema Sanghi’ director Sundar C – accusing all of them of coordinating to build a false political narrative for their own professional benefit.
Dear PTR,
As a journalist, I have been on the ground for four days in Madurai Central constituency and I am reflecting on what the people of your constituency are saying. I am not here to endorse any candidate contesting in Madurai Central. If people are satisfied with your… pic.twitter.com/6McsaGkXNm
— Vinodh Arulappan (@VinodhArulappan) April 11, 2026
By naming “Chennai Updates” alongside identified individuals in a public setting, PTR effectively unmasked the operator’s real identity to the rally crowd and, by extension, to anyone watching the speech online – the defining act of doxxing.
He framed the entire group as working to “portray the State Governor as some great man” and dismissed them as operating for their “next business venture.”
He even made a post naming the handle on his X account.
Till now, in politics, I have never addressed my comments at any individual contesting against me or our party in elections, be it 2016, 2019, 2021, 2022 or 2024.
Our approach has always been clear: who we are, what we do, and why people should vote for us.
However, after the… pic.twitter.com/ipNjOgUnmQ
— Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) (@ptrmadurai) April 11, 2026
Chennai Updates (@UpdatesChennai) is an anonymous account on the social media platform X, known for tracking civic issues in Chennai and also Madurai, and for regularly flagging governance lapses including those attributable to the DMK government. Despite its critical tone on specific issues, the handle had a history of broadly supporting the DMK and was not considered an adversarial or opposition-aligned account. It seems that the handle had not, by any public record, personally attacked PTR.
This is not the first time PTR has responded to unfavourable media coverage with public pushback rather than accountability. His response to Vinodh Arulappan’s ground report was a lecture on constitutional federalism that critics argued deflected rather than addressed the civic failures documented. The doxxing at the rally follows the same pattern targeting the messenger rather than engaging with the message.
PTR holds the IT portfolio in the Tamil Nadu government, making the act of doxxing a digital critic particularly pointed.
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