As the DMK intensifies its opposition to the Centre over the upcoming delimitation and the National Education Policy (NEP), party leader and Tamil Nadu IT and Digital Services Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan clarified that there would be no compromise. He cited issues such as tax devolution and state population imbalances to reinforce the party’s stance.

At The Indian Express’s Idea Exchange session, Thiaga Rajan, the former Tamil Nadu Finance Minister, spoke about the growing financial disparity between rich and poor states. He pointed out that "increasing net transfers from the rich states to the poor states" have widened over time. He stated, “When this government came to power, for every Re 1 of total grants and schemes’ taxes given to Tamil Nadu, UP got Rs 2.90. By 2024, it was Re 1 to Tamil Nadu, and Rs 4.35 to UP.” Despite this, Rajan argued that UP’s per capita GDP had declined relative to Tamil Nadu. He questioned, "The question arises, how are we ever going to get equal if you keep on taking the money and you keep on not being able to produce any result? Where does this end?"

According to the DMK leader, he was “saying this as a patriot”. “There is no future for this country if the poor, high-population northern states don’t see significant improvement in their per capita incomes and overall outcomes. That is the reality… The point is we don’t get to fix that because we are a regional government… And the party in Delhi that should be focused on this is instead focused on trying to berate us, browbeat us, threaten us, extort us and blackmail us. So we say we don’t want to lose any more representation.”

The Minister for IT and Digital Services stated that Tamil Nadu's stance on delimitation was not new and questioned why the Centre had failed to find a solution despite the exercise being frozen for 50 years. “The problem has become worse. Now, if we don’t even have a voice in Delhi… All the money is there, all the power is there, all the national policy is there. What happens to us if we (don’t) fight for our rights?” Amid the language debate, with DMK chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin opposing the NEP, Thiaga Rajan argued, "The problem is not whether Tamil Nadu adopts the NEP or not. The problem is, can you teach enough children one language properly in UP and Bihar? Can you improve the rate?"

Thiaga Rajan also challenged the fundamental principles underlying the National Education Policy (NEP). “Under the original Constitution, education was a state subject, and the outcomes across states have been tremendously different over the last 75 years… We have been consistent from day one that we don’t think that somebody else sitting in Delhi should tell us how we should run school education,” he expressed. Thiaga Rajan rejected the BJP's claims that Tamil-medium enrollment had declined under the DMK or that its standards had dropped, according to the ASER 2024 report. He asserted that Tamil Nadu outperformed other states in most education parameters.