The MISA row that shut down Tamil Nadu's Assembly on September 7 has pulled in an unlikely voice: actor Gopi Kannadasan, son of the late poet Kannadasan, who has released a video going after Udhayanidhi Stalin directly.

Here's how we got here. During a session on September 7, Chief Minister Joseph Vijay accused DMK members of leaning on old MISA-era grievances for political cover whenever the opposition pressed him with questions. Vijay reportedly tapped his own jaw while speaking, an apparent reference to the widely reported claim that MK Stalin's jaw was broken during his MISA imprisonment. DMK members took it as mockery of Stalin's ordeal.

What followed was chaos on the floor. DMK legislators, led by A.V. Velu, demanded the Speaker strike Vijay's remarks on the Sarkaria Commission, the MISA Act and Murasoli Maran from the official record, arguing the CM had trivialised Stalin's sacrifice and broken House conventions. Speaker J.C.D. Prabhakar disagreed, saying the Chief Minister hadn't violated any rule and had only referred to information already in the public domain. He refused to expunge anything.

That refusal set off a dharna. DMK MLAs sat down in front of the Speaker's podium in protest, and House marshals eventually removed the entire group from the Assembly. The MISA controversy, as Filmibeat Tamil reported, has since snowballed well beyond the chamber.

Enter Gopi Kannadasan. In a video that's now doing the rounds online, the actor takes direct aim at Udhayanidhi Stalin, telling him not to invoke the anti-Hindi agitation since his own father, Kannadasan, was part of that movement too. He goes on to make a pointed and contested claim: that MK Stalin's MISA detention had nothing to do with the freedom struggle and everything to do with remarks Stalin allegedly made about Indira Gandhi at the time. Filmibeat Tamil reported this as Gopi Kannadasan's own claim, not an established fact, and it's worth treating it that way. He also drew a comparison to a recent remark by Vijay about a woman described as his "friend," suggesting a similar pattern of indecent commentary, though the specifics of that earlier remark aren't detailed in the reporting.

Gopi didn't stop at history. He argued that Tamil Nadu voters backed the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam precisely because it's a two-year-old outfit untainted by six decades of what he called DMK corruption, and said the party's long history is, in his words, a shameful badge rather than a credential.

The video has drawn heavy backlash online, with plenty of users slamming Gopi Kannadasan for the tone and content of his attack. The actor, known for Kaththi, Vikram Vedha, NOTA, Naachiyaar, NGK, Ponniyin Selvan and Diesel, hasn't walked back any of it so far.

Whether the DMK responds formally, or whether the Assembly's expunction fight resurfaces when the House reconvenes, is still open. Given how quickly this MISA argument has spilled from the floor into film-industry social media, it's unlikely to end with one video.